


Hair the Colour of Espresso

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-11-24
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:24:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 43,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sansa’s father is murdered, she is forced into hiding in the care of an old friend of her mother’s. She doesn’t trust Petyr though, doesn’t trust the way he looks at her, and when a job at a coffee shop around the corner offers a refuge, she grabs the opportunity with both hands.</p>
<p>But then Marge Tyrell’s brother comes in one morning, reading “Pride and Prejudice” and looking like some kind of god sent to torture her, and Sansa can’t help but wonder if Petyr really does have her best interests at heart in keeping her hidden away from the world.</p>
<p>(Tags will be updated as the story progresses)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the prompt:  
> "Sansa is the daughter of the late Prime Minister, but has since gone missing and presumed dead in a massive coup d’etat. Alayne, however, is trying to make ends meet as a barista, working double shifts just so she doesn’t have to go home to Petyr, the man who (unfortunately) took her in, sparing her from the mayhem.
> 
> She tries to keep to herself, but then Willas Tyrell - son of some magnate and set to inherit his father’s company (and its building in the financial district), is a regular every morning. He hobbles in with his oak cane, and orders his double Americano Misto. 
> 
> And she has no idea why, but he starts spending longer mornings there.
> 
> Perhaps ordering another coffee just to stay there longer.
> 
> And for some reason, he can’t quite keep his eyes off of her."
> 
> Only in the earliest stages now, slow-burning and long-running both. Hope you enjoy.

"Sansa, please, I can protect you-"

"You shouldn't have to," she tells him, ordering herself to pull away even as she sinks back into his arms. "Will, I don't want this anymore," she says more firmly than she would have thought possible wrapped in his arms.

"My family has a holiday home in the south of France," he whispers, his hands peeling away her clothes as he talks. "I can get documentation for you as Alayne, I can get you to France, Sansa, we can lay low for a while and then who knows where we might go-"

"You can't give up your family for me," she sighs, tilting her head back over his shoulder, shuddering when he slips a hand under her bra. "Will, Willas, you can't, you can't do that-"

"I don't want them," he says desperately, other hand sliding up under her skirt and tugging aside her knickers just enough. "Not if I can't have you, Sansa, I don't want anything if I can't have you."

"Stop," she begs, not sure what it is she wants him to stop. "Will, I can't do this to you, you have a life here, family and friends and everything you could need-"

He turns her suddenly, holding her face (one hand is sticky and damp from being in her knickers, but she barely notices that).

"If I can't have you - as Sansa Stark or Alayne Stone or whoever the hell you need to be to be safe - then I don't want anyone else. I don't want any _thing_ else, Sansa - why can't you believe that?"

She does believe him, that's the problem, that's why she has to get out of here as quickly as possible and get on the plane that will take her to Dublin and then on to New York, the plane that will take her away from Joff and his mad family and get her to something that might become safety-

There are tears in Will's eyes, though. She hates that she has to hurt him so much to have even this much of him.

She kisses him once more, straightening her clothes as she steps away, and shakes her head.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers, running and knowing that he can't catch her, not with that bum knee of his.


	2. Chapter One.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months earlier.

**Six months earlier.**

Sansa Stark didn't even notice the blood on her face until Jory started wiping it away with rough hands and some tissues.

"C'mon girl, liven up, got to get you off the street-"

Joffrey's security was more practiced than hers, of course, than her father's, so she didn't spare a thought for him. She knew that Meryn and the rest of them would have him safely away-

"Sansa, Sansa, look at me," Jory was saying, holding her face in his hands, "liven up, c'mon, we got to get you out of here you daft thing-"

"I'll take her," Petyr said smoothly, taking her by the elbow and tugging her away from Jory and into a waiting car. "Tell Cat she's safe with me."

Petyr, Mum's foster brother, with some indeterminable job working for Joffrey's parents. Petyr would keep her safe.

The car door slammed shut, and Sansa couldn't be sure but she thought she heard more gunfire as she was driven away.

* * *

As soon as he had Sansa tucked away in an apartment way down in the East End, her father's blood and brain matter washed off her face and fresh clothes replacing the ones that had become abruptly red, Petyr reached out and touched her face.

"So like Cat," he sighed, and there was something behind his smile that made Sansa wary, but she had no other choice than to trust him.

* * *

Life with Petyr settled into a rhythm within days. Don't leave the apartment, stay away from the windows, avoid him as much as possible and for God's sake lock the bathroom and bedroom doors.

It was far from perfect – she knew, for example, that her family (less Dad, but she couldn't think about that) were going mad looking for her, Mum and Robb and Bran and even Rickon appearing on the news together, Uncle Ed and Granddad putting on a press conference, Aunt Lysa launching an appeal, Uncle Ben being interviewed from Iraq – it was so much, too much.

Then again, it wasn't every day that the PM was assassinated, and Sansa had been walking with her arm linked through Dad's when the bullet tore half his head off. She'd disappeared straight after in the mayhem, and nobody knew where she was.

Nobody but Petyr.

Sansa wasn't as stupid as everyone seemed to think – in fact, so many people assumed she was an idiot that it was beyond insulting at this stage – and she knew that there was something amiss with the way Petyr had spirited her away and kept her hidden. She supposed it made sense, in a way, seeing as how Robb and Mum had only narrowly escaped an attempt on their lives and Arya had been missing for longer than Sansa.

But she was being selfish.

If her family didn't know where she was, then she could be ninety-nine per cent sure that Joff didn't know, either.

* * *

It got to the point where she simply couldn't stay in the apartment all of the time anymore – she couldn't, not with Petyr creeping about with that weird smile of his – and so she used his credit card and ordered a great many boxes of chemicals and, when they arrived, she set to work.

It hurt somewhere frivolous and vain as well as somewhere deep and private to dye her hair dark brown to hide the red, because that was one of the few constant reminders she had of her family that didn't make her want to retch the way their faces on the news did.

The fake tan had cost an arm and a leg, but it was high quality stuff and she didn't end up looking like Katie Price, so she deemed it worth the inordinate expense. Petyr had more money than he knew what to do with anyways, the vast wardrobe of designer clothes he'd procured for her was testament to that, and so it was with nearly-black hair and a golden sun-kissed tan that Sansa went forth from the apartment with credit cards in the name "Alayne Stone" in her purse and a driver's licence in the same name tucked into the inner pocket of her bag.

* * *

The Eyrie was a café not far from where Sansa was staying now, a lovely place that took up the top floor of a restored Victorian cotton mill and was decorated all in shades of sky blue and warm cream. The cavernous lower floor – the factory floor – was home to one of those "edgy" galleries Marge had always been dragging her to in the hope of snagging some wealthy young art dealer.

Sansa knew it by reputation, even though she'd never actually been there before – probably in some magazine or other, although it was equally likely that Robb had taken a fancy to it. He liked to pretend to slum it by eating in flash places outside the Borough when he was in London – and decided why not, it couldn't hurt, she hadn't had a decent coffee in weeks because Petyr had thought of everything but good beans.

The lift whispered up, porcelain tiles instead of mirrors, and the two girls behind the counter smiled in greeting. Their nametags read "Mya" and "Myranda," and when they settled on the tables beside Sansa's to chat and let slip that they needed someone to help with the morning and evening rush, she volunteered on the spot.

"Another dark-haired beauty to add to the collection," Myranda – Randa – laughed, and Sansa wondered if this would prove to be her way out of staying with Petyr. "Welcome to the team, Alayne."

* * *

Will – he'd been every possible variant of that name over the years, Willas and William and Wilhelm and everything else – froze as soon as he walked through the Eyrie's doors, because Sansa,  _his_  Sansa, was standing behind the counter.

Oh, of course, her hair was dyed dark – almost black, but not quite – and she was wearing some sort of fake tan that darkened her lovely fair skin without turning her orange, but he'd have known those eyes anywhere, that long, slender neck, the way she flicked her hair over her left shoulder but not her right, hair that had no discernible parting and fell in an elegant tumble around her lovely, lovely face.

Sansa Stark was hiding here, of all places. Will shoved aside the desperate ache to run to her and hold her, and then he panicked blindly for about twenty seconds as he took his seat at his usual table in the corner. The next thing he did was set aside his cane and take out his phone to send a group text.

_Abort mission, dinner not breakfast, will explain later._

He picked a list eight numbers long and then hit send, and breathed a sigh of relief when the delivery reports flashed up on screen.

That done, he bravely hid behind a battered copy of  _Pride and Prejudice_ that he miraculously had tucked into his bag beside his laptop. He couldn't let Sansa see him, couldn't get caught-

"How's it going, Will?"

He looked up with a smile – more relief flooded his brain – and leaned back easily.

"Not too bad, Mya," he said. "On my own this morning – think you can take pity and bring me a double chocolate muffin on the house?"

Mya snorted with laughter and turned on her heel.

"One Americano and a double chocolate muffin coming right up – full price, Tyrell."

He rolled his eyes, wondering how in the hell he was supposed to sit here and drink his coffee and eat his muffin, knowing that Sansa was just yards away, wondering who'd told her to dye her hair, hating that she looked different – hating that he was too late, just like he nearly always seemed to be – but loving the tight fit of her neat white blouse above her wide, dark blue skirt, when Randa slid into the seat opposite him.

"The gang abandon you this morning?"

"Appointments," he said vaguely. "Doctors and dentists and vets. For Renly, you understand."

Randa laughed, tossing her head and showing off too much cleavage, just like she always did, and Will laughed with her.

"Saw you looking at the new girl," she teased. "Pretty, isn't she? Alayne, her name is. Quiet little thing – you'd like her."

Sansa was five foot ten, Randa five-three, and the absurdity of her calling Sansa a "little thing" didn't go unnoticed. Will chose not to comment, though, because it was just easier with Randa.

"Didn't see you at your sister's party," she said, leaning across the table to fix his collar. Normally, he would have swatted her hand away with a good-natured grimace, but he was too on edge this morning. He knew that he'd quite possibly hit her hand hard enough to break something. "I thought it was pretty bad taste, what with her best friend just gone missing, but Marge does as Marge pleases, I guess."

Will barely held back his anger – he'd been beside himself since Robb had called to tell him that Sansa had gone missing in the wake of their father's murder, because that meant that he'd failed her again – and forced a pained smile.

"Marge has always been wilful," he said tiredly.  _Marge has always been a self-centred bitch with a highly inflated opinion of herself and no concept of loyalty to anyone but Gran and potentially Loras._ "I heard all about what happened at the party, though," he added, managing to inject a teasing note into his voice.

He chatted with Randa as he ate his muffin and drank his coffee and she pranced about serving customers, but he couldn't keep his eyes from flickering to Sansa every two seconds, and it was infuriating. She either hadn't recognised him – a possibility, considering she and Marge had only become friends after he left for Cambridge and he hadn't been home nearly at all – or hadn't noticed him, which was also a possibility given as how they were in the middle of the morning rush.

"I'm off," he called from the door of the lift, waving to Randa and Mya and trying not to try and catch Sansa's eye. "I still want that muffin, Mya!"

"No hope, Tyrell," she called back with a grin, and Sansa's eyes flashed up to his just as the lift doors eased shut.

He pulled out his phone and slumped back against the cool tiled wall.

"Renly, bring Ed and Rodge and come to mine – I've found her. I've found Sansa."

* * *

Sansa didn't breathe properly until Marge's brother left the caff.

Of course, she hadn't actually  _spoken_  to Will, but she knew that even with her hair dyed and the tan she still looked a hell of a lot like her mother, or, more importantly, an awful lot like her uncle Ed, who just happened to be the best of friends with Will Tyrell. And Renly Baratheon, Joff's uncle, and Rodge Greyjoy, Robb's best friend's older brother. Of all the damned people- No, he couldn't have recognised her. He would have said something if he had. Ed had been all over the telly and the papers looking for her and Arya, and there was no way in hell that his best friend would ignore her if he recognised her. Right?

"I see now why you've turned down every bloke who flirted with you," Mya said, suddenly at Sansa's shoulder. "You set the bar high there, Ally. Will Tyrell – good luck, I suppose."

Randa appeared at her other elbow and snorted derisively. "Yeah, she'll need all the luck she can get – can you ever remember hearing about Will and a girl? Or a bloke, for that matter? He's about as interested in sex as a nun, Mya. Alayne's going to need more than  _luck."_

Sansa was surprised by the rush of indignant disapproval she felt on Will Tyrell's behalf – so what that he had managed to be discreet? Randa seemed to take a sort of perverse pleasure in extolling her sexual adventures, but Sansa had been raised to prize discretion and modesty and-

"He was watching our new girl the whole time he was here," Mya argued, sliding herself up onto the counter with a grin. "Have you ever seen him stare at a girl like that? I know I haven't. Bet you any money he'll drop by either this evening or tomorrow morning for another look. Bet you."

Randa raised an eyebrow and matched Mya's grin.

"Twenty quid," she said easily, folding her arms. "I'm telling you, he's asexual or something – I would have heard  _something,_ Mya. I  _always_ hear something."

* * *

Renly let himself and Ed and Rodge into Will's place – one of those townhouses that was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside – with his key and led them straight into the kitchen.

Will was sitting at the counter with his head in his hands, a bottle of whiskey and four glasses at his elbow.

"She's at the Eyrie," he said hoarsely, not lifting his head. "Damn it all, she's working as a waitress at the Eyrie. Randa even recommended that I ask her out. She has her hair dyed dark and she's managed to pick up a tan somewhere, but she's at the Eyrie, which means Littlefinger has her. I'll string him up-"

"Be thankful it's Baelish and not Joff who has her," Renly pointed out, hefting himself up onto the counter beside Will and pouring drinks. "At least you've found her quickly enough this time – she's only been missing what, a month?"

"Five weeks, four days," Will corrected. "Why am I  _always_ too late, Renly?"

Ed slapped Will across the back of the head with a sigh.

"Snap out of it, Tyrell," he advised. "We need to work on a plan to get Sansa away from my beloved foster brother as soon as we can, and you're the only one who can do it considering she'll run a mile if any of us go near her except maybe Trystane. Just be thankful we haven't told the others yet, else Robb'd probably be charging over there right now to play the gallant knight and rescue her."

"Bugger you, Tully," Will snapped, turning on Ed with murder in his eyes. "It's alright for you, all you have to do is not get married at a place of Roslin's father's choosing, you never have to coax her through PTS-bloody-D-"

"We know, Will," Rodge broke in evenly, folding his arms and leaning on the other side of the counter. "We know, mate, but there's nothing we can do to help – Sansa's knows we all know who she is, so you're our only hope. What have you come up with?"

Will shrugged, knocking back the whiskey Renly had helpfully poured in one swallow.

"Stalk her into loving me?" he said helplessly. "I don't know, do I? She's skittish enough at the best of times, and I've never had to get her away from Baelish while Joffrey was still alive before. I haven't the foggiest how I'm supposed to get her to trust me enough to let me help."

All four were quiet for a long moment, sipping on their whiskey – Jameson Reserve, because Will was too lazy to bother actually hunting down good scotch like the rest of them did, but Jameson Reserve was just good enough not to be laughed at when he needed a stiff drink – three of them wondering how long it would be before Will broke out the blue-label vodka and Will wondering how on earth he was supposed to earn Sansa's trust without betraying that he knew precisely who she was.

"I'll have to chase her," he said at last, letting his head thump down onto the counter. "This will take  _months."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right chaps, because this is so far out of my box, I... I don't really know how this will work out. I mean, I know the plot, but if it'll work is another thing altoghter.
> 
> But *yay* I can use modern syntax and slang.
> 
> And there's a sort of surprise coming, because this allows me to twist in a couple of other modern AU type things I had planned this last while and just sort of never got around to writing, so – yeah.
> 
> And yes, Rodge Greyjoy is Rodrick – I imagine him as having been kind of like his nicest uncle and namesake because gawd, that Harlaw blood had to come out somewhere, right? He's a dear, so he'll be a constant presence here.
> 
> Oh well. Hope you enjoyed :D


	3. Chapter Two.

Days bled into weeks, and suddenly Sansa had been living as Alayne for just over two months and it was her birthday. Sansa's birthday, one that she couldn't celebrate because Alayne's birthday wasn't until February, and it was only October.

"I will not cry," she told herself, curling up into a ball under her duvet. "I am twenty-one years old today, and I won't cry. I  _won't."_

Had she been at home, had everything not gone to hell, she would have been anticipating an enormous party – as big as Robb's, bigger than Jon's – and she would have been dizzy with excitement.

* * *

Now, she was forcing a brave face on it, going to work and avoiding Petyr, who had left her a gift of a dress that she would never, ever wear for him before he'd disappeared that morning.

Will Tyrell walked in just like he did every morning, looking painfully handsome in that open-collared shirt and those sinfully well-fitted trousers.

"Good morning," he said brightly, adjusting his leather satchel and leaning a hip against the counter. "How are we today?"

She smiled, as small a smile as she could get away with without seeming rude, and ducked away.

"Not bad," she said over her shoulder, carrying the order for the table right by the lift and praying that Mya would come back from her break right then to deal with Will. "Busy, I suppose."

"I can see that," he agreed, still smiling, shifting his weight slightly and meeting her eyes. "You seem marvellously unruffled by it all, I have to say."

"Oi, Tyrell, stop flirting and start ordering," Mya said, appearing behind the counter like an angel sent to save Sansa. It was too easy to fall into flirting with Will, too easy to forget that Alayne didn't flirt, that Alayne was shy and could barely speak to strangers or good-looking men, not like Sansa. It was too easy to just be  _Sansa_  with Will, and that was dangerous. She couldn't afford to be Sansa, not when Joff had made a new appeal for any news of her whereabouts – and who was going to deny the Prince of Wales anything, especially news of the girl he had loved so much before she went missing, his college sweetheart?

Sansa barely held back a shudder at the memory of how Joff showed his  _love_ for her, brought back to the present by a touch on her elbow.

"Alayne? Are you alright?"

Will's smile had faded, replaced with genuine concern, and she wanted to spit or scream or run away. What right did he have to be so nice? It wasn't fair. She just wanted to fade into the background, but Will Tyrell was making that damn near impossible just by being himself.

"Fine," she said, forcing another small smile and sweeping off to clear some newly vacated tables. "Absolutely fine."

She wasn't fine, hadn't been fine in weeks, but that didn't matter. She was alive and away from Joff, and that  _did_ matter, and if keeping it that way meant trying to avoid Will Tyrell's hesitant, weirdly shy attentions, well, so be it.

She could lament not being able to go out with one of the nicest guys she'd ever met later. Right now, she just had to stay alive.

* * *

Robb sat down beside Ed at the side of the pool, not bothering to watch Will's progress through the water anymore. The speed with which he was ploughing down the length of the pool was evidence enough of his mood, after all.

"I take it she's still resisting?"

Ed laughed and leaned back on his elbows, kicking his feet in the water.

"According to Will, your sister is – and I quote – "the single most infuriatingly stubborn woman I've ever had the displeasure of meeting when she wants to be." Which of course means he's even madder about her than before, because she's being  _strong_ and all that."

"She's alright, though?"

"Baelish hasn't laid a finger on her as far as Will can tell, no. I'd have killed him myself by now if we thought he had."

Robb nodded slowly and then sighed.

"This is worse than Paris," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "At least there, it was just a case of strong-arming Baelish into giving her up, but if we tried that now, we'd probably have His Majesty's Secret Service bearing down on us without His Majesty ever being aware of it."

"I hate him too," Ed agreed. "He always seems to be one step ahead of us, the bastard. I wish we knew if he was one of us or if he just has some ridiculously vague trigger."

"One of us" meaning someone who remembered the other lives. Someone who remembered Paris and Dresden and Moscow and Chicago and Rome. Someone who knew that this wasn't their first and only turn on the merry-go-round.

"I really, really hope he's not one of us," Will said, heaving himself out of the water to sit at Ed's other side. "I'm killing the bastard either way if he lays so much as a finger on Sansa, but I'll get that out of him first."

Robb sighed. Will hated Joff and Littlefinger more than any of them for their treatment of Sansa, was easily blinded by that hatred, and only Ed and Renly could ever manage to cool his temper.

"And then you'll spend twenty five in the nick, and what use will you be to Sansa there?" Ed pointed out, sprawling flat out on the floor and kicking his feet hard enough to send sprays of water all over the place. "Don't think she'll want to be married to a murderer in all fairness, mate."

Will grunted in what might have been agreement – who knew, when he was in one of his moods – and then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. His knee shook, nearly buckled, and then straightened, all livid scars of red and white on his freckled skin.

"We'll see," was all he said before limping away, and Ed and Robb sighed.

* * *

Another two weeks passed, and it quickly became clear that Mya had been right. Will Tyrell  _was_ interested in Sansa – Alayne – enough to start dropping by in the evenings as well, just as they were about to shut up shop, lingering after what should have been closing time to chat and flirt and generally just be nice.

Sansa kind of hated him for it, but not as much as she hated going back to the apartment. Back to Petyr.

What was worse was that Randa and Mya had gotten into the habit of leaving her to lock up, meaning they had gotten into the habit of leaving her alone with Will. They ignored every protest and laughed at her when she lost her temper, and so it was that on one cool, late October afternoon with the last of the sunshine slanting in through the high windows that Sansa found herself confronted with the sort of grief you usually only saw on news footage from an active war zone.

Only problem was, the telly was off, and she was seeing it in Will Tyrell's eyes.

When it had become clear that he didn't know who she really was, that he didn't recognise her as Ed's niece or Marge's friend, she'd relaxed around him a little. That didn't explain why she was standing right up close in front of him, touching his face and asking "What's wrong?"

The pain in his face twisted and she almost flinched back.

"There's just- There's someone I love very much in a lot of danger at the moment- It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," she said, startling herself. If he said it didn't matter, it didn't matter – she couldn't let herself get tied up in this sort of crap. She had enough on her plate as it was, which didn't explain why she wanted so much to comfort sweet, shy Will.

Or why she reached up on her toes and brushed her lips across his. That wasn't how you comforted people who might as well have been strangers and who might blow your cover, was it? No, she knew it wasn't, but that didn't make her pull back when he lifted his free hand and twisted his fingers into her hair to kiss her properly.

* * *

Dinner was at Renly and Loras' that night, which meant everyone was taking their lives into their own hands, or at least putting them in the hands of the city's gastroenterologists. Neither was a particularly skilled cook, but Loras had a maddened enthusiasm in the kitchen that far outstripped his talent and left him potentially lethal.

Will drifted in when his brother opened the door with the dopiest, most dazed smile Loras had ever seen, and thudded down into his usual place in the middle of the longest of the three couches in the sitting room.

Then he did something different – he slumped down and threw back his head and  _laughed._

Even Cella – on damage control in the kitchen – came out to look when he didn't stop after five solid minutes of borderline hysterical giggles.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, sitting up and wiping away tears from the corners of his eyes. "I'm sorry, I know I'm late, but I spent an hour this evening kissing Sansa, so I'm not even really sorry."

* * *

Petyr's hand trailed idly across her shoulders as he passed behind her, and she forced down a shudder.

"The Eyrie," he mused. "An interesting place. Your cousin owns it and the gallery downstairs, you know."

She did know – she hadn't when she'd taken the job, but ever since she'd found out she'd made it her business to avoid Robin every time she saw him coming, although Mya made it difficult because she was weirdly fond of him and constantly tried to introduce "Alayne" to their boss.

She said nothing, though. She didn't know where Petyr was going with this.

"He's had a hard time of it since his father died," he went on, sitting opposite her and stroking his neat little beard. "Your aunt… Hasn't been in the best of health."

Meaning she was soft in the head, but Sansa knew that – Mum had always talked about Aunt Lysa being "delicate". She still couldn't see what Petyr's angle on this was.

"It would be terrible for them to recognise you," he said softly, reaching across the table to pat her hand. "Them or any… Patrons."

She froze. Him knowing that Robin and Lysa owned the Eyrie and the Vale – the gallery on the shop floor – wasn't a big deal. The Arryns had always been known for their involvement in the art world, and Robin even looked the part of a stereotypical young modern art dealer, with his artfully untidy hair and purposefully dishevelled clothes and the delicate flock of birds in flight – falcons, he'd once told Bran, Sansa remembered that – that were tattooed on his upper right arm. Everyone knew that Robin owned the Vale, especially after that debacle a few weeks back where some footballer or other who'd been dragged to a show by a girlfriend with cultural pretentions had been found sniffing cocaine in the loos.

Petyr knew that she was well able to keep away from Robin and Lysa, so that wasn't a genuine concern, but how the hell did he know about Will? Was he having her  _watched?_

"I don't know what you mean," she said carefully. "Nobody who might recognise me comes to the Eyrie."

"Not even your dearest friend's older brother? The man who may one day be the Prince of Wales' brother-in-law?"

The news that Marge – that stupid, traitorous bitch – had swooped in on Joff as soon as Sansa was out of the picture had hit her like a kick in the teeth, but at least it meant Marge would likely be too busy keeping Joff occupied to go anywhere with her least favourite brother, and that Joff would call off the search for his missing-presumed-dead ex-fiancée.

"I don't know what you mean," she said again. For some reason, for the first time in her life, Sansa Stark felt rebellion stirring in her gut, and Petyr Baelish be damned if he thought he could keep her away from the best kisser she'd ever met.

* * *

Sansa had always loved winter, and she loved Christmas most of all, but starting to sell Christmas decorations the day after Halloween struck even her as a bit much.

Still, she wasn't going to complain when Will arrived in one morning a couple of days after that again, bundled up in a lovely dark green wool coat, his cheeks pink with the cold, and held a bundle of mistletoe above her head, because it was silly and sweet and made her laugh. Sometimes, she felt as if she hadn't really laughed at all since she'd come to London for uni and met Joffrey bloody Baratheon.

In some ways, her romantic interludes with Will – because she kept it carefully limited to kisses before lock-up and after the morning rush – made it both easier and harder to stay as Alayne Stone. Easier, because in letting Mya and Randa see her with Will, it was as if she became a realer person to them. Harder, because he was just…

He was everything she'd left behind in so many ways. He was part of her old life, something which was impossible to forget when he so easily chatted about Ed and Renly and Rodge, about Marge and Loras, about all the people Sansa had known and many who she had loved before she'd let herself get tangled up with Petyr.

The only advantage she could still see in remaining with Petyr, remaining as Alayne, was that Joffrey absolutely couldn't lay his hands on her if he thought she was dead.

* * *

_Her shoulders ached – not the worst of her pains, but the one that was least shameful to think about – but she wasn't going to cry. She was a Stark, and she wasn't going to cry, no matter what he did to her._

_He jerked the bonds tighter and laughed at her. She. Would. Not. Cry._

* * *

Sansa – Alayne, but he couldn't wait for the moment when he didn't have to call her that anymore – looked even lovelier in her knitted dresses and brightly coloured tights than she had in her wide skirts and neat little blouses. Will couldn't help but watch her like a lovesick puppy as she darted around the Eyrie, smiling with every order she took and delivered.

"Alayne and Will, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G-"

"Shut up, Randa," he sighed, looking over his shoulder with a long-suffering smile. "Don't you have work to do?"

"I would shut up if you and sweetums over there had done much more than kiss," she mocked, settling on the edge of his table and folding her arms. He hated when she did that. It meant she was going to lecture him on his sex life, and while he was fond of Randa, her tact left much to be desired. "You've been sitting here every morning and every evening for months with a hard-on – metaphorical when it isn't physical – and you still haven't shagged her. You're a good looking bloke, Will – what gives?"

He raised a quelling eyebrow, but Randa was completely impervious to anyone's disapproval but her father's, and Nestor Royce was always slow to give it.

"Perhaps Alayne's just more of a lady than you, or else I'm more of a gentleman than the kind of chaps you're used to, dearest Myranda."

* * *

_Dresden, 1938._

_Renly leaned back against the counter at Willas' side, between him and the stack of Star of David armbands, and grinned. Sansa was spinning around their front room with Robin, laughing at whatever comment Robb passed on their cousin's dancing, and Will smiled at how happy Sansa seemed._

_"You know, this isn't Victorian London," Renly murmured, all but biting his lip to try and hide his grin. "She won't be scandalised if you try and seduce her before you sign the marriage register."_

_Will – Wilhelm this time, not actually Willas – rolled his eyes._

_"I have more respect for her than that, thanks," he said, glaring playfully at Renly and at Rodge beyond him. "Just because I_ can  _have her before we get married doesn't necessarily mean I_ should."

_"No," Rodge agreed, "but maybe the rumours coming from Berlin mean you should."_

* * *

He came back just as she was about to lock up that evening – the shutters were already down, the safe emptied and the contents sent to the back in Mya's care, the power to the machinery switched off – and caught her so completely off guard that she was saying yes to his invitation to dinner before she could even consider why she should say no.

* * *

_She didn't say no when he asked her out to dinner. Why should she have? He was the Prince of Wales, and he was just so- so charming! Her very own Prince Charming!_

_He lost his temper when his soup was wrong, but even at that early stage, it was too late for her to turn back. He made that perfectly clear when he locked the car doors._

* * *

Sansa was so jumpy at first that he almost regretted asking her out for a bite to eat – he supposed she probably assumed that he'd bring her somewhere that she was in danger of being recognised, but instead chose a tiny little place just down the street from the Eyrie, and she visibly relaxed when she glanced about and saw that nobody they knew was likely to come here.

"Did I do alright?" he asked, letting a teasing note into his voice as they ambled slowly back towards his car. Under the orange glow of the sodium streetlights, there was the faintest hint of red in her hair, and he desperately wished to hand her a bottle of colour-stripper right then and there so he could have his Sansa back.

She linked her arm through his and smiled up at him shyly – God, he was going to  _murder_ Joffrey Baratheon, Prince of Wales or not – with her lower lip caught between her teeth just so.

"I suppose," she said softly, huddling closer against his arm as if to escape the cold. She'd never been one to be troubled by the cold, though, so he dared to hope that maybe she just liked being close to him, even without being triggered, without remembering.

"Good," he decided. "Does that mean you'll let me take you out for something to eat again on Friday?"

"Not tomorrow?" she teased, biting her lip again. Christ, he'd always loved when she did that, and here she was driving him mad without even knowing she was doing it. "I'm hurt."

"I have a life outside you, you know," he teased back, nudging her with his hip and wincing when his weight shifted onto his bad knee for a second. "I'm going out with some friends tomorrow night."

"Female friends?"

"Male," he assured her. "We were at Eton together, and then Ed and I went to Cambridge and had to despise Rodge and Renly because they went to Oxford."

It was a testament to her acting skills that she never flinched at those names, particularly Ed's. Will just kind of wished that she had, because that might speed things along considerably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right: REINCARNATION AU. Because I really don't understand why we don't have more of those in this bloody fandom. It's absolutely ripe for them, after all.
> 
> I mean, I was talking to a person the other day who suggested the absolutely insane and brilliantly interesting idea of a Hunger-Games-as-ASOIAF-reincarnation AU. IMAGINE IT. Snow would be Tywin, and… Idek man. Coin would probably be Dany. IDEK. It would be so interesting though.
> 
> Also: For those who don't know, Eton's the poshest school for boys in England, so I thought it made sense for them to go there.
> 
> And for anyone who knows what Made in Chelsea is, I get the most absurd Amber vibe from Margaery Tyrell. Does anyone else? I think it's the absurd ambitiousness. Idk.
> 
> If you are still reading, congratulations and I adore you.


	4. Chapter Three.

Randa and Mya were arguing over something that had reportedly happened in the X-Factor House – Sansa didn't watch it and therefore didn't care – when Will walked into the Eyrie hidden behind an enormous bunch of flowers (mercifully not roses, because she'd never live that down) and soaked to the skin.

"Lovely refreshing winter rains," he announced cheerfully, somehow managing to execute the most hilariously stage-worthy bow without actually shifting his weight off his right leg and his cane to present Sansa with the flowers. "For the fairest of winter roses, the finest winter blooms I could scrounge up – I'm afraid I didn't have time to get out to the old house to get decent flowers, but accept Interflora's best, with my apologies."

Sansa flushed and managed to herd him and his bloody flowers into the corner before absolutely everyone in the place turned to look at them.

"What are you  _doing?!"_ she demanded, not quite able to stop smiling even as she blushed. "You can't- I'm working! You can't just-  _Will!"_

He laughed and somehow sneaked a kiss in the middle of her whispered tirade of why he shouldn't bring flowers to her at work and then sat down before she could react.

"If you do this every time I bring flowers, I'll bring a fresh bunch every morning," he promised, spreading his hands and grinning. "Or else you could let me take you out for dinner tonight. It's your choice."

"You cad," she said, aiming for annoyance and missing by a mile. "You absolute-"

"I'll pick you up as soon as you lock up," he broke in, still grinning. "Anywhere you want to go – or I could cook."

That brought her up short.

"You can cook?"

"Well, I'll never win a Michelin star, but I know how to throw a few things in a pot without poisoning myself. And that way you don't need to break out your Sunday best – it'll just be you and me if you say yes."

"Will-"

"Go on."

"Will-"

"Say yes."

"Will-"

"I'll make Eton Mess. I'll even make the meringue myself. Old Boy's honour."

"Will! Yes! Alright!"

It was a wonder his smile didn't split his face in two.

"Excellent."

* * *

_"Did you just say no to me?"_

_"I- No, I wouldn't, please, Joffrey, please-"_

_The slap echoed off the high ceiling._

_"You will never say no to me, do you understand? Never! You will do as you are told!"_

* * *

Cella Baratheon and Robin Arryn answered Will's panicked summons the following morning with the good grace to hide their smiles.

"How the hell do I make a meringue?" he asked, ushering them inside with wide eyes. "I haven't made a meringue in- have I ever made a meringue?"

"You can buy meringues, you know," Robin said lightly, winking at Cella behind Will's back. "You don't  _have_ to make them yourself."

"Yes I do," Will said sharply. "I promised."

Cella rolled her eyes and pushed Will into the kitchen. "You're an idiot, Will – you shouldn't have mentioned desert at all. You can cook, but you can't bake."

* * *

_Rome, 1734._

_"Who thought that allowing the lord and lady into the kitchens was a good idea?!"_

_Willas and Sansa stumbled up the stairs, covered in flour and heavily singed but giggling, the head cook's voice echoing up behind them._

_"WHO LET THEM NEAR THE TARTS FOR TONIGHT'S FEAST?!"_

* * *

Will was standing at the door with an enormous umbrella when she came downstairs that evening and hustled her into his car – she knew nothing about cars, but she had an inkling that his was something that would feature noisily on Top Gear.

He looked weirdly flustered.

"So the meringues were harder to make than I thought," he admitted sheepishly as he led her awkwardly up the steps to his front door – between the umbrella and his cane and the slippery steps, Sansa found herself amazed that he didn't fall – "but I did manage the strawberry sauce without incident."

"You didn't  _have_ to make them yourself," she pointed out with a smile. "Will-"

"Alayne," he interrupted, and suddenly she was pinned between him and the front door, umbrella in the umbrella stand and coats dripping steadily onto the floor. "Shut up."

Kissing him shouldn't have been addictive, but dear God it was – he might have spent his entire life training to do nothing but kiss her, the way he knew  _exactly_ how to twist his tongue around hers and-

He pulled back, breathing heavily and far closer than he had been even moments before.

"Well," he said, smiling absolutely wickedly, "I think we should proceed to the kitchen."

* * *

Dinner, Will felt, was a roaring success, and then Sansa let him lead her into the sitting room to sit down and watch a little telly.

She was half-asleep against his shoulder by the time they were halfway through Graham Norton _,_ of course, and he missed the rest of the episode just watching her snuggle into his side.

"I should go," she murmured near midnight, lifting her head just enough to meet his gaze, which of course meant that there was another quiet, busy half an hour. "Really though," she insisted, pulling her mouth away from his. "Mya asked me to come over this evening, we're going shopping early in the morning-"

"Stay here," he offered without thinking, turning and nuzzling into her neck. God, she smelled so good-

"I can't," she sighed, pulling away and stopping when he followed her. "Oh,  _Willas-"_

His real name, Jesus, his real fucking name, oh God, no way was he letting her go now, he'd bloody well trigger her right now if he could manage it-

"I have to go," she said again, pushing away from him and standing up. "Really, Will – Mya will worry."

He heaved himself to his feet and took her face in his hands. He couldn't let her go now-

"Mya knows that you're with me," he reasoned, lowering one hand to slip around her waist. "She won't worry, Alayne, she's known me for years-"

She flinched at being called Alayne! She actually bloody flinched!

"Alayne-"

"I have to go," she gasped, pulling away so quickly that he may as well have slapped her. "I'm sorry, Will, but I- I have to go."

"At least let me leave you to Mya's-"

"I'll walk," she insisted, rushing out into the hall ahead of him. "I- I'll see you on Monday morning."

"Alayne-"

"Goodnight, Will," she said, leaning up on her toes and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Thanks for dinner."

The door slammed behind her. Will's phone was at his ear without him remembering taking it out of his pocket.

"Renly, I think I've fucked everything up. Leave Loras at home and bring that brandy you were mouthing about the other night."

_"How drunk do you want to get?"_

"Berlin."

_"Jesus. I'll be over as soon as I can."_

"Thanks, mate."

_"I'm not wasting the brandy on you, though. Vodka will have to do."_

* * *

Sansa got three streets before a car rolled smoothly to a halt at the side of the footpath and the passenger door was thrown open.

"Get in," Petyr ordered, his voice brooking no argument. "Now."

She did as she was told. Sansa was good at that.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

"I- It was just dinner, Petyr-"

"With a  _Tyrell!_ Are you stupid?"

Sansa sat up straighter – no, she wasn't bloody stupid, and she was sick of people telling her that she was.

"It was just  _dinner,"_ she insisted. "And he doesn't know who I really am-"

"You'd better hope he doesn't," Petyr said coldly. "Because if he does, you can guarantee his brothers do, too. And we all know who pretty Loras Tyrell tells everything, don't we?"

She paled.

"Marge."

"Which means…?"

"Joffrey will hear."

"Exactly," Petyr agreed. "Now, you're not going to see Will Tyrell again, are you?"

She hesitated and then shook her head.

"No," she sighed. "No, I won't."

He sighed in return, sending her an apologetic look.

"I don't know what you'd do without me," he mused. "It's such hard work keeping you safe, you know, and all out of the goodness of my heart…"

His eyes trailed down her body, and she knew that it was payback time.

* * *

_Her wrist creaked as he twisted it just a little further. And then a little more, and then-_

_She cried out in pain, but all he did was push her harder against the door._

_"I saw you with Harry Hardyng," he snarled._

_"We were just talking!" she sobbed. "Just talking, Joff, I swear, I'd never look at anyone else, you know that-"_

_"You're_ mine,  _Sansa Stark, you understand?_ Mine."

* * *

Mya had accepted her flimsy excuses on Saturday with her usual cheerful goodwill, and so it was that Sansa – Alayne – arrived for work on Monday and didn't need to make excuses.

"So, how was Tyrell's cooking?" Randa asked without preamble as soon as she arrived, tossing her bag into the back room and pulling on her apron with a knowing smile. "Should he stay in the bedroom, or are you going to let him into the kitchen again?"

"Leave her alone, Randa," Mya chastised with a smile to Sansa that implied she wanted  _all_ the details as soon as Randa left. "Ask Will himself if you're so curious-"

Sansa made a break for the back room as soon as she noticed Will coming, but she was too late – his hand closed around her wrist before she could even get to the counter, and when she saw his face she surrendered. He looked almost as upset as he had the evening she'd kissed him first. Could that really have only been three weeks ago? If it wasn't so stupid, she'd say that it felt as if she'd known him her whole life, but that was stupid so she determinedly put it down to him being such a nice bloke and such an excellent kisser.

"Alayne," he pleaded. "Please – just talk to me for a minute? Please?"

She hesitated.

"I'm at work," she said lamely, knowing that he'd only have to look at Mya and Randa with those heartbroken eyes and they'd be pushing her into his arms. "But I suppose I can take my break early?"

"Go on ahead," Mya said firmly, cutting across Randa before she could open her mouth. "Take the rest of the morning off – Robin opened the gallery earlier, that new show is coming in later. You could go down there if you want some space?"

Sansa nodded gratefully and darted into the back room to grab her bag and her coat and pull off her apron.

"I'll be back for the evening shift," she promised, avoiding Will's eyes even as she let him lead her into the lift.

He barely waited for the doors to close before he turned her face up with gentle fingers under her chin.

"Did I do something wrong?"

* * *

_Paris, 1812._

_He chased her out the door, cursing his leg and calling her name by turns._

_He hadn't hurt her, couldn't have, he hadn't laid a finger on her, all he'd done was tell her the truth-_

_"They'll kill me if they see us together," she said desperately over her shoulder. "But they'll kill you first to keep their secret, you know it as well as I do-"_

* * *

She swallowed and looked into his eyes, saw how genuinely hurt and confused he was, and wanted to cry. Why couldn't anything be simple?

Then she wanted to scream. Nothing had been simple since she met Joffrey. If she'd only stood up to him, even just once-

But then again, he'd never  _allowed_ her to stand up to him, had he?

* * *

_"Joffrey, please, I'll never do it again-"_

_The leather snapped against the backs of her thighs and she cried out. The skin didn't break, not quite, but she knew that this was only the start of her penance._

* * *

"I can't see you anymore," she said, not near as firmly as she'd have liked. "I just can't. It's nothing you did, but-"

"Is this to do with whoever it was picked you up after you left mine on Friday night?"

"How do you- How?"

He snorted derisively and offered her his arm as the doors dinged open.

"Even in Kensington, I'm not about to let a beautiful girl walk around on her own after midnight. Christ, Alayne, what do you take me for?"

"I- I'm sorry, Will, but I  _can't-"_

"Is he hurting you? I just want to help – let me help, Alayne."

Standing there under the stark industrial lighting in the gallery, there was nothing in his expression to make her doubt him, and worse – she felt as if she could trust him.

Sansa hadn't trusted anyone in a long time.

* * *

Whatever it was Joffrey had done to her, whatever Littlefinger was doing to her, Will fully intended on finding out so he could present a valid excuse to Renly and the others when he asked for help in covering up a double murder.

Sansa hadn't noticed him nearly slipping on her name twice already, which was a small mercy, but she was too frightened to notice anything much at all, it seemed.

"Alayne," he said firmly, dropping his cane and taking her by the shoulders. "Alayne, whatever it is, I  _can_ help. I promise you. In fact, I  _will_ help. But I can't do a jot if you don't tell me what's going on, sweetheart."

She shook her head, trying to step back – and he let her, because he could see panic rising from the moment he took hold of her.

"Alayne, please-"

"I  _can't!"_ she half-shrieked, backing away from him. "I can't, I can't-"

"Why not?" he begged, making to follow her and freezing when she flinched away from him so horribly that she almost lost her balance. That she thought he would hurt her, even without the knowledge that would be hers if he could manage to trigger her, that she had so little faith in him-

"What did they do to you?" he asked in near-silent horror, so quiet he would be amazed if she'd heard him. "Oh, sweetheart, I'd never hurt you. I couldn't do that. I could  _never_ hurt you."

"You barely know me," she said, still cowering behind upraised hands. "You don't mean any of this-"

"Why do you think that? Alayne-"

"You don't even-"

 _Oh, shit,_ he thought.  _Oh, holy bloody shit,_   _I've made her cry. I haven't made her cry since- Shit, since Prague!_

"Please," she pleaded, shoulders shaking, voice hitching, "please, Will, just leave me alone.  _Please."_

He sighed and settled down awkwardly onto the floor beside her when her knees gave out. His own knee didn't seem to know whether it was dead or in agony, and decided on agony when he folded it to get closer to Sansa.

"I can't do that, sweetheart," he admitted, wondering how much into that she'd read. "I'm sorry, but I honestly can't."

* * *

Sansa knew that it was possibly the stupidest thing she'd ever done to sit in Will's lap with her face pressed into his neck for a good hour, letting herself take comfort in the smell of him – which in and of itself was a bit weird, because she'd never really taken note of anyone's smell before – but she couldn't help herself.

He didn't really do anything in particular. He just sat there and held her and hushed her when she cried.

"I'm sorry," she said, embarrassed and a little ashamed when eventually she pushed herself to her feet. "I shouldn't have- I'm sorry."

He snagged his cane from where it had fallen and levered himself up, wincing when he had to catch his weight on his left leg.

"Come back to mine for lunch," he implored. "Alayne, I – I don't even know what to say. I just want to help, sweetheart."

"I can't," she said at once, scrubbing at her face with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry, Will, I really am, but I- I can't."

"Alayne-"

"I'm sorry," she said again, leaning up and pressing her lips to his once more. "Please, though – please Will. Leave me alone."

* * *

Renly let himself into Will's with the intention of having something to eat, because Will actually kept food in his fridge rather than living on restaurants and takeaway like Renly and Loras did – they only ever cooked when the others were coming over, because they knew full well that Cella and Robin would step in and take over to prevent a mass bout of food poisoning – but quickly forgot about stealing his lunch when he opened the door to a haze of bluish pipe smoke thick enough to choke on and shattered crystal glittering on the kitchen floor at the end of the hall.

Will was sprawled across the couch, pipe hanging precariously from the corner of his mouth and a tumbler of whiskey – the fifth tumbler, if Renly was any judge of the amount of crystal on the floor, and rather a lot more whiskey than that if the near-empty bottle on the coffee table was anything to go on – dangling from his long fingers. His leg – his  _bad_ leg, the stupid fucker – was hooked over the back of the couch in a way that would be painful even for Renly, with a fully functional knee and an actual kneecap, but Will didn't even seem to realise that he should be in pain – either that, or he'd changed the habits of several lifetimes and gone against the recommended dosage of his painkillers. Renly doubted that, though, because Will was always the most responsible of them and even Ed, famously the  _least_ responsible of the four of them, would balk at overdoing it on Will's pain meds.

"What the fuck is this?" he demanded, aware that his voice was a shade shriller than he would have liked, but too worried to actually care. If Will was this cut up over something, it was usually his dad disinheriting him for marrying Sansa or Sansa dying before him. As far as Renly was aware, neither had happened this time, so he was sailing uncharted waters just now. "Jesus Christ, Will-"

"She told me to leave her alone," Will said, and Renly crossed the room – crunching on more crystal as he went – to get a proper look at Will's face. His head was hanging over the arm of the couch, and Renly winced at the state of him. Red-eyed and with at least three days of stubble – although given how strong Will's beard was when he let it grow in, it could be less – Will looked like Bear Grylls or something.

"Well, that's all well and good, but you desperately need a shower, mate," Renly said, automatically moving Will's bad leg before hefting him to his feet. "C'mon-"

"No, Renly, no – Sansa told me to leave her alone. 'Go away, Will,' she said, 'I've told you as much as I can, so please, leave me alone.' What am I supposed to do?"

All but carrying him across the minefield of razor-sharp crystal, all the while relieved he'd chosen to wear his Docs that morning rather than the Converse Loras was always trying to coax him into, Renly looked Will in the eye as best he could.

"Look, Will, I'm not going to pretend I know what you're going through, because I don't," he admitted. "None of us do, but you can't do this to yourself."

They stopped in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and Renly took Will's pipe away from him as an afterthought.

"Littlefinger has Sansa now, and that's probably why she's being so cagey, you know that," he went on, heaving Will up the stairs in fits and starts. "It'll work out, Will. Have a little faith. Not like you to be so put out by a little setback like this, is it?"

It took him the annoyingly long walk to Will's en suite to realise that his friend was crying.

"Ah, shit," he grumbled, the first vestiges of panic creeping up his spine. He could have handled anything else – Will taking a pop at him, attempting to shoot up – something none of them had experience with except Robin and, surprisingly, Cella – drinking himself into oblivion – but tears left Renly so uncomfortable that whoever he was comforting usually ended up laughing at him because of how utterly crap he was. "Oh, fuck, Will, don't cry mate-"

"It's not even just Sansa," Will said, abruptly venomous. Renly hadn't realised until that moment just how drunk Will was. "I had an appointment with that fucking  _idiot_ who operated on my knee yesterday, and he said- Damn it, Renly, I thought that I'd get better this time. Modern medicine and all that. Christ, I genuinely thought everything would work out properly this time – Sansa and me'd get to dance the first dance at our wedding for the first time ever. The fuck did I do to deserve this?"

Deciding that a shower would be a really, really stupid idea, Renly stuck the plug in the bath and turned on both taps full belt before turning to look for something to substitute as bubble bath.

"Dove for Men shower gel it is," he sighed, dumping half the bottle into the steaming water. "Look, Will – we'll get through this. We'll help, alright? Although Robb and Ed might punch you for keeping them out of it for this long, but to be honest, you kind of deserve it, mate."

Will didn't even look up from stripping off his clothes – which smelled worse than Renly's bag had after Glastonbury the first time they'd gone, him and Will and Ed and Rodge – and Renly took his leave with a sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me and there's worse to come and I'm going to go hide now so bye : )
> 
> *pokes head back around door* Keep reading!


	5. Chapter Four.

"If I just kill Baelish, she'll be free of him."

"Will-"

"I've done it before, Ed."

"Yes, but there was never quite so high a chance of you getting caught before, was there?"

Will looked up from tightening his brace and scowled.

"What the bloody hell am I supposed to do?" he demanded. "She runs into the back room every time I appear in the damned door. I can't very well walk up to Baelish's place and say "Sorry, looking for Alayne, I know she's Sansa but she doesn't know I know," can I?"

Ed rolled his eyes at Rodge, who sighed and shrugged.

"Come on," Rodge said, rolling his shoulder. "Let's get some of this out of your system."

Will cast one vaguely concerned glance down at his bad knee before squaring up in front of the stumps, bat at the ready.

"I love the smell of sweat in the morning," Ed said forlornly, prepping himself to run for the ball. "Try not to go too hard, Will. I've got a meeting at ten, so I won't have long to wash-"

Rodge bowled. Will swung. Ed sprinted across the cricket pitch, cursing his bad luck that Sansa was still completely unreachable and that that always fouled Will's mood to such an incredible degree.

* * *

The one thing Sansa was thankful for was that Petyr never actually called her by her name, not around the house, not when he was telling her someone else to avoid, not when he was looming over her and fucking her so hard it hurt for days after.

She was thankful for that, too – that he only made her sleep with him once a week. He'd come to her room on Christmas night, which had left her so horrified and ashamed of herself that she'd been sick afterwards – it made it more real when  _he_ was in  _her_ bed. She could almost pretend that it wasn't happening when he called her to his room, but with the smell of him lingering not only on her sheets but actually down into her mattress, there was no escape.

That she had become little more than a whore for her own safety was not in question. That she would ever escape him was.

* * *

"He's losing it," Renly said, rubbing a tired hand over his face and handing a bottle of water to Cella. "I mean it – he hasn't been this bad since… Oh, God, since Philadelphia, maybe."

They winced as one – Sansa had been killed by one of Joffrey's cronies in Philadelphia, and Will had hung himself the night after word broke. They couldn't let things get that bad this time. They couldn't lose him again.

Trystane spun around idly on the high stool at the breakfast bar, tapping his iPhone against the countertop as he thought.

"What if we triggered some of the others?" he asked. "Enough to build a safety net? It worked in St. Petersburg. Will got to Sansa before Joffrey that time."

* * *

_St. Petersburg, 1917._

_Sansa was a vision in white silk edged with silver-grey lace, her hair twisted and coiled and shimmering in the light of a dozen crystal chandeliers. Willas spun her around the floor, laughing at the sheer luck of having Sansa and not being crippled and generally just having everything better than he ever remembered before._

_There were whispers of a red army – Lannister or Targaryen, they would not know until it was too late. Not that it mattered, because when the Lannisters killed them all in St. Petersburg, they were reborn in Dresden to be slaughtered by the Targaryens._

* * *

"Not going to happen," Rodge disagreed immediately. "Will doesn't trust anyone to help, not even us, really. He's not said anything explicit, but…"

"It looks as if Joff was abusing Sansa worse than ever before," Renly said bluntly. "And it sounds as if Baelish has her right where he wants her again. Will's in over his head, but he's so afraid for her that he won't let us help."

"So basically," Jon said, scratching at the violently red tattoo on his shoulder that showed through his tight white t-shirt, "we have to help them without actually helping them?"

"Pretty much," Rodge agreed, shrugging. "Same as always, really. Poor Sansa – if Will would let any of us know what her trigger is, we might be able to avoid this."

Trys blushed crimson suddenly.

"Well," he said primly, "if Ned's anything to go by, some triggers are best kept private."

* * *

"Please, Mya," Will found himself pleading, "just ask her if she'll talk to me? I haven't the foggiest what I've done – I just want to make things right!"

Mya's face folded in sympathy, but she shook her head.

"She's adamant, Will – she doesn't want anything to do with you. Clean slate, she says."

"I- Can you ask her what I've done, Mya? Please. Please, I can't bear this. Did I hurt her? I couldn't live with myself-"

"You didn't do anything to her," Mya soothed, squeezing his arm comfortingly. "She just… Alayne's in a bad place, Will. She has been right since she arrived here. Give her time – she'll come round, I promise."

* * *

Come round she did – Will barely managed to pull on a t-shirt, he was rushing so hard to answer the frantic banging on the front door.

She was a mess – hair all over the place, eye make-up like a panda, eyes red and watery, clothes half-hanging as if they'd been pulled at.

"I- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I didn't know who else to come to," she sobbed, throwing herself into his arms and burying her face in his chest. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Will-"

"Don't be sorry," he hushed her, manoeuvring her inside and pushing the door shut behind her. "Oh, sweetheart, don't be sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need somewhere to stay?"

"I- Yes, Will, yes, please, please, can I stay? Please can I?"

"Of course," he assured her, stroking her hair to stop her shaking. It had never failed him before, and it didn't fail him now – the tremors stopped in minutes, and then she just sagged against him, utterly exhausted.

"Let's get you cleaned up," he said gently, ushering her up the stairs. "The second bedroom is en suite – you can stay in there, that way you'll have all the privacy you need."

If Sansa thought it odd that he hadn't batted an eyelid at her turning up on his doorstep at half-two in the morning, she didn't give any sign of it. He was perversely grateful for that, because she was in no fit state to listen to his explanation just now.

* * *

Renly arrived with Ed and Rodge for breakfast at Will's as they always did on a Wednesday, and was amazed to find Will unshaven, wearing nothing but tracksuit bottoms and stripey socks, and only just starting to fry the eggs.

"Keep quiet," he whispered, hobbling across the kitchen to close the hall door. "Sansa's upstairs," he said in a slightly more normal voice. "She's sleeping – the painkillers have her knocked out, but I don't want to risk waking her."

Silent astonishment greeted this pronouncement, and he sighed heavily.

"She arrived at the door at half two this morning," he said irritably. "She's a mess – was I supposed to turn her away?"

"You could have given us some warning!" Ed hissed, looking straight up at the ceiling as if it might yield a glance of Sansa. "Jesus fucking Christ, Willas-"

"Don't start on me, Edmure," Will warned, pushing past Renly to get back to the cooker. "Don't  _fucking_ start on me, Tully, or I'll break your fucking face, I swear to God."

The other three looked at his back in mute shock, the delicate tracework of deep green rose vines and blooms inked into his skin the only proof they had that this really was Willas Tyrell, and suddenly understood just how bad Sansa truly was.

* * *

Sansa rolled around on the cotton sheets, under the goosedown quilt, and flopped back against the orthopaedic mattress for a good half an hour before getting up just because she could.

Petyr had always made sure that her bed had silk sheets, heavy allergy-proof quilts, a soft mattress – it was unbelievably good to be back to normality. Even if that normality was twisted by the smell of a cooked breakfast floating up from downstairs, and by the view out over a tiny little green from the window.

Will's house. Will Tyrell's second bedroom, decorated in shades of cream and mauve, with matching en suite bathroom.

It took her another ten minutes to actually get out of bed, clutching Will's t-shirt close around herself because she hadn't thought to bring her bag upstairs with her last night after she'd arrived.

She decided to take another long, hot shower, because she hadn't been comfortable taking her time in the bathroom while staying with Petyr.

She didn't notice when the piping hot water made some of her hair dye run until it rubbed out on Will's fluffy towels, but a quick look in the mirror assured her that her hair was still brown. She was still Alayne.

She knew that she should have gone downstairs for her bag by now, but she found that she kind of liked wearing Will's clothes, the t-shirts and tracksuit bottoms he'd left out for her, so she snuggled down into a soft old pair of Canterburys that were far too long, an enormous t-shirt which informed her that Will had done fundraising for a hospice charity and a hoodie so big she had to roll the sleeves back six times to find her hands, and read one of the books Will had left for her.

It was  _Pride and Prejudice –_ her favourite.

* * *

He swallowed harshly before knocking on the door, tray balanced precariously on one hand.

"Come in," she called, and when he pushed open the door, he was presented with the sight of her bundled up in his clothes, reading his book, sitting in his bed, looking so lovely his chest ached.

"Good morning," he said, smiling helplessly. God, she was beautiful when she smiled like that. "Did you sleep well?"

"Very," she assured him, and he knew she was lying. He'd been awake all night listening to her toss and turn and pace and cry. "I can't thank you enough, Will-"

"There's no need," he promised her, setting the tray down on the nightstand and sitting on the edge of the bed. "Alayne, I- is there anything else I can do to help?"

"You've already done so much-"

"It's nothing," he said, waving his hand in dismissal. "It's not as if I can't afford it, is it?"

She bit her lip, cheeks flushing the loveliest pearly pale pink, and he wanted so badly to just clamber into bed beside her and hold her until the hurt went away. He couldn't do that, though, so instead…

"If… Alayne, if you want to talk-"

* * *

_"It seems Will Tyrell is quite smitten," Petyr said, his voice light, jovial, almost amused. Her stomach clenched in sick anticipation, because that meant that he was really, truly angry. "My little birds tell me that he's in every morning and every evening to try and catch you."_

_"I didn't- I told him not-"_

_"Oh, Alayne," Petyr sighed, cupping her chin and tilting her face up to his. "This will never do, sweetheart."_

* * *

"No," she said sharply, cowering away from him. "I- I can't talk about it. I can't. I- Will, I can't, I can't-"

"Calm down," he said, sounding surprised by the sheer force of her reaction. "Sweetheart, if you don't want to talk, that's fine. Whatever you need, it's  _fine."_

She couldn't quite believe him – or rather, she could, and that was what made this all so damned difficult. She shouldn't have been able to trust him at all, shouldn't have  _wanted_ so much to trust him.

But she could, and she did, and so when he told her that he had to go into the office for a couple of hours, but that she had the run of the house because he'd called Mya and gotten her the day off, she accepted it with a wan smile and curled back under the covers to continue reading about Lizzie and Darcy and Jane and Bingley and all the rest.

* * *

Will sat with his head resting on Jon's kitchen table, arms hanging limp at his sides, and didn't move.

"Your tea's gone cold," Cella said gently, pushing it closer to him. "C'mon, pet, perk up. She's safe, isn't she?"

"She's broken," he corrected, voice muffled against the scrubbed pine. "And I have a double murder to plan. None of you are helping."

"She'll get better," Robb said firmly, sipping his own tea and smiling faintly when Cella scratched through his hair. "She always does."

"She's never been this bad," Will insisted, stubbornly not lifting his head. "Trust me, Robb. I know her better than you."

Jon huffed a dry little laugh, shaking his head.

"We might know her better if you let us help," he pointed out, waving Val away when she appeared in the door. She nodded, cast a concerned glance at Will, and disappeared back into the living room with Loras Roslin and Ned Dayne. Triggered though the three of them had been, they still weren't part of the  _group._ There were only nine in the  _group –_ Jon and Robb, Cella and Robin and Trys, Renly and Ed, Will and Rodge. One from each of the nine Great Houses from that strange not-there time, the first they all remembered, from Westeros which seemed never to have existed.

Targaryen and Stark, Lannister and Arryn and Martell, Baratheon and Tully, Tyrell and Greyjoy. If Will couldn't trust the other eight with Sansa, if he  _wouldn't,_ then she must be in a truly shitty state.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this while wearing my Sesame Street Christmas t-shirt to try and stop myself from crying because ugh ugh ugh this fucking chapter.
> 
> Okay, so, while Hiberno-English is closer to British-English than American-English, it's still colloquially different and so some turns of phrase here and such may jar slightly for any British readers as being not quite right. If so, I apologise, but they'd never stand out as odd to me so I'm afraid I don't notice them :S
> 
> A note on the Lannisters as Red Army in Russia/Targaryens as Nazis in Germany: If you look at the Leninist/Stalinist era Politburos, there's a sort of "Let's tell everyone we're equals even though everyone knows we're richer and better off than all of them put together" thing that sort of screams "Lannister" to me if considered in relation to ASOIAF. As for the Nazi/Targ thing… Well, eugenics and a fondness for burning their enemies are two shared traits. So.
> 
> (Also I've misplaced my copy of P&P and can't remember if he's Bingley or Bingham so apologies for that because I was hoping spellcheck would angrily underline one or the other so I could use the other but it didn't so whoops :S)
> 
> Direct all enquiries and complaints to the comments, brave readers : )


	6. Chapter Five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Super short, but quite a bit happens so let's just roll with it, yes? Yes. Good. Enjoy.

 

It was raining again when Will came home, and Sansa was curled up in the bottom of his walk-in wardrobe, right on the verge of a panic attack.

She couldn't help it – she'd decided, against her better judgement, to poke around his room for something warmer when she couldn't work out how to turn up the thermostat, and it had all gone really well until a belt had fallen from a shelf above her head and the sound of leather cutting through air and a buckle rattling-

She sobbed at the memory, clutching fistfuls of her hair and trying to breathe, but it was so damned difficult to force herself to take in air when all she could see was Joffrey standing over her, his belt doubled over in one hand and her wrists in the other to hold her still so he could punish her for talking to anyone at all without his permission.

Sansa wasn't in her room, or in the kitchen or the living room or even in the study, where he thought she might have retreated, when Will got home from work.

He stood on the top landing, scratching his head and trying to decide where to look next – the cellar seemed unlikely, given that it was locked, as did the attic, but there were three bedroom besides his own and Sansa's to check and-

He stiffened, noticing for the first time the strange rasping noise that he really should have taken note of before, and followed it into his room, into his wardrobe, and his heart twisted.

"Oh, Alayne," he sighed, wishing more than anything that he could just cast aside the deception and comfort her properly. "Come here, sweetheart."

She surged to her feet and into his arms all in one go, pressing as close to him as possible and not seeming satisfied with that.

"I'm sorry," she wept, fingers digging into his shoulder blades, "I wanted a jumper and I came in and the belt fell and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"What on earth do you have to be sorry for?" he asked, feeling almost hysterical with the sheer horribleness of the situation they were in. That they were  _always_ in. It was all just so damnably unfair, especially when considered in comparison with Robb and Cella, who both always knew, or Renly and Loras, who needed a single case of sexual indiscretion to be home free.

"I just- I- I can't- I'm sorry-"

"Come here," he said again, guiding her out into his bedroom proper and settling her on the side of the bed. He sat beside her – had he been able, he would have knelt at her feet – and took her hands, waiting patiently until she managed to catch her breath.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She swallowed a half dozen times, not able to look him in the eye, and then-

"I have this… This ex," she explained haltingly. "And when I made him- When I upset him, he- He used his belt."

* * *

She wasn't sure how it happened, but somehow she was in Will's lap and he was holding her so tight she didn't feel like she was broken apart right then, and he was swearing into her hair.

Really, really swearing. A lot.

"If anyone ever  _dares_ raise a hand to you ever again, you tell me and I'll kill them," he promised, lifting his head and looking her straight in the eye. People had promised her all sorts of things before, but she'd stopped believing them a long time ago.

She couldn't not believe Will, though, so she just threw her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.

* * *

Once he was certain that Sansa was safely in the shower with lavender shower gel – her favourite, she'd always loved lavender – and the sort of shampoo and conditioner Cella had assured him would be best for Sansa's hair at the moment, Will made his way downstairs and called Rodge.

Over the years, Rodrick Greyjoy was the one Willas had ended up on the opposite side to one another most often but somehow, that had only brought them closer as friends.

Edmure and Willas were close by bonds of marriage and sheer nearness, Renly and Willas through, again, bonds of marriage and a surprisingly similar outlook on life in general, but there was no person aside from Sansa on earth that Willas Tyrell trusted, trusts or will trust as he does Rodrick Greyjoy.

"Joffrey was- Jesus, Rodge, I can't believe it. I  _can't._ She's only gone through something like this the once before-"

_"Belsen."_

"Exactly! How do I bring her back from this? How do I- And then there's Littlefinger, the bastard! What do I do?!"

_"Keep talking to her, Will. Show her that that weird instinctive trust is well deserved. I know circumstances are different, but that's what I have to do with Theon and Asha – drawn to fucking Ramsay Bolton and Justin Massey…"_

"I'll try. Can you- Rodge, can you not tell Ed or Renly about this? Please?"

_"You think you need to ask that? I'm insulted, Will. Keep in touch, yeah?"_

"Thanks, mate."

* * *

Will had a recurring dream that he really, really liked, even though he was always aware that it was a dream, because it made how much he missed having Sansa that little bit easier to bear.

In his dream, he woke up very slowly with his head tucked under Sansa's chin, his cheek resting over the dip in her collarbones, so he could immerse himself in the soft not-rosemary scent of her hair and skin.

In his dream, her arms were wrapped around him, her legs, too, warm and strong and soft, long and slender, her body twisted together with his so perfectly that even in the dream, it was more than enough to influence his physical body.

In his dream, without opening his eyes, he liked to turn his head and kiss her throat, the gentle flutter of her pulse, the hollow under her ear. He liked to bury his face in the fuzzy curls at her nape when she stretched and arched underneath him, liked to feel the familiar weight of her breast in the palm of his hand, liked to feel the warmth of her skin under his fingers.

In his dream, every time he dreamed it, he whispered those magic words against her lips, never opening his eyes to dispel the illusion of having her back to him. Those magic words that he couldn't say until she trusted him, because they'd frighten her off if he couldn't seal the deal by calling her  _little wolf._

_"I'll keep you safe from all of them. None of them will ever lay hands on you again, little wolf."_

In his dream, there usually followed all manner of lovely, fulfilling sex, but this apparently wasn't his dream because instead, Sansa stiffened underneath him and pulled him up by the hair to look him in the eye.

"Willas," she gasped, confused and elated and terrified all at once, and all he could do was stare down at her.

"Sansa," he breathed, holding himself up on one arm so he could brush her wrong-coloured hair back from her face with the other hand. "Oh, Sansa, Sansa-"

"They hurt me," she blurted out, pulling him back down into her arms and beginning to shake. "Willas, make them stop, make it  _all_ stop-"


	7. Chapter Six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ass has been kicked by this chapter so thoroughly I can't sit down. Not even kidding – originally, it was supposed to be completely from Willas' perspective, but then he was like GET OUT PRIVATE so enter Renly!
> 
> Also: Shorter chapters are the norm from here, I think, brave readers. Hang tight. Joffrey makes his debut soon.
> 
> (Also also: I haven't been online this week so sorry to anyone who's comments I didn't reply to!)

Will hadn't turned up for work in three days, which was so unlike him that everyone was worried – and according to Robin, Sansa hadn't been at the Eyrie in four days which meant it was very possible that she'd been killed and Will had found out and, without telling anyone, done himself in.

Well, of course he wouldn't have told anyone if he was going to kill himself, Renly supposed, but that was beside the point.

Loras had come with him as much in concern for Renly's safety as for Will's – given how strongly Will reacted in relation to anything to do with Sansa, if Renly marched in and confronted him it was likely to get ugly, and Loras wasn't about to risk Renly like that, even to his own brother. Especially not to his own brother.

They knocked on the door first, to be polite, and waited.

It was ten minutes before Will opened the door, but he  _did_ open the door with a resigned grimace firmly in place under his three-day beard, which seemed out of place given how clean his blindingly white shirt, dark jeans and battered brown boots were.

"Doctor Lomys is with Sansa," he said quietly, stepping back to let them inside. "He thinks I'll need to bring her to a couple of different specialists, but he said that going on the prelim, everything is fixable. Come through to the kitchen."

Renly waited until they were in the kitchen with the door closed to start asking questions.

"Where have you been for the past three days?" he demanded.

"Here. With Sansa. I triggered her by accident a couple of days ago – three days I've been shut off, you said? Three days ago, then."

"How d'you mean  _by accident?_ Triggers aren't accidental things, Will, and from what you've let slip about Sansa's, it's pretty specific."

"She had a nightmare," he said. "She came into my room, and I thought I was dreaming, so I triggered her."

"You shagged her-"

"It's not a sexual trigger, Renly!" Will snapped, irritation clear on his face. "It's verbal, alright? Sansa's trigger is verbal, and I said the words, convinced I was dreaming, and triggered her accidentally, alright? Of course, the first day it looked like triggering her had made her worse, but she's stronger than anyone thinks she is. She'll come through."

Renly looked at Loras, and bit back a sigh at the confirmation that Will was quite clearly trying to convince himself as much as them.

"Tell us what's wrong with her," he said gently, taking a seat at the counter and watching Will's hands shake as he tried to put on the kettle. "Will, c'mon-"

"What's wrong with her?" he said, voice thick with tears. "God, Renly, what  _isn't_ wrong with her?"

"Will," Loras said softly, putting a hand on Will's shoulder. "C'mon, it can't be that bad, can it?"

"She- Loras, she- God, the things Joffrey did to her, I- I-"

Loras staggered back when Will threw himself at him, sobbing like a child, and Renly quickly moved to start cleaning the sitting room – Loras always seemed to know precisely what to say when someone started crying, so Renly left him to it.

* * *

It took Will a good five minutes to collect himself, and he seemed embarrassed by his outburst.

"I'm sorry," he said, half-laughing at himself as he scrubbed his face clean with the tea-towel and accepted a cup of tea from Loras. "It's just- It's been a tough few days. She usually has a little respite right after being triggered, but Dresden ended so badly-"

He broke off and shuddered, and took a gulp of tea before continuing.

"She spent most of the first day sedated," he went on, wrapping his hands around the mug – a souvenir from one or the other of Rodge's sailing events – and shaking his head. "I called Doctor Lomys as soon as she calmed down enough for me to be sure that she'd been triggered, and he sedated her. He's been back yesterday and today to examine her, but it's going to take a couple of goes because she's- She's jumpy."

Loras cursed softly, sitting on the arm of Will's chair with his arm around his brother's shoulders, and Renly bit his lip.

"Is there anything we can do?"

"Talk to Robb and Ed?" Will suggested. "Ask them to see about triggering her mother – Catelyn hates me most of the time, and she probably thinks we were complicit in Ned's death, so… Yeah, talk to Robb and Ed. Sansa's going to need her family, and I'm fairly sure Bran's trigger is breaking his back, and he usually triggers Rickon, doesn't he? And ask Jon if he could come see her, maybe. Either him or Robin."

"I'll keep Cella away," Renly agreed. "The last thing she needs is a Lannister walking in on her."

"And ask Jon to keep Val away, too," Will said. "The hair – I know it's a long shot, but… I just think we need to be careful. And keep Trys away, too. He has the biggest mouth in England aside from the Thames."

Someone in the door cleared their throat, and Will pushed himself to his feet to go speak with Doctor Lomys.

"How is she?" he asked. "Today, I mean – who else do I need to call?"

"I'll speak to a friend of mine about her scars," the doctor said, taking off his glasses to clean them. "I won't lie to you, my boy – she has a long road ahead of her. I don't know how she hid this for so long, considering how much in the public eye she was, but I commend her for her strength. Many people would have cracked under the strain."

"Doc," Will begged. "Please. You know she'll tell me later, anyways."

The doctor squinted up at Will, sympathy in the twist of his mouth, and nodded.

"Indeed," he agreed reluctantly. "Although I don't think she would want your brother and his lover to know the extent of her injuries. Perhaps somewhere more private…?"

* * *

Renly was used to breaking bad news to  _the group,_ mainly because there seemed to be a never-ending list of things that they failed to avoid every time they were brought back and he always seemed to hear about new additions to the list first.

"We haven't seen her," he said tiredly, looking at the four men standing around him with sore eyes. He'd left his glasses at work, and was really starting to regret it. "The doctor said that it was best to leave her be for now, but he agreed with Will that Jon or Robin should visit her next week-"

"Why not me?" Robb demanded, looming as best he could despite a three-inch deficit in height as compared to Renly. "I'm her  _brother-"_

"And you and Edmure look bizarrely like her, but you're not trying to hide masses of scars," Loras put in, setting a tray of muffins (a gift from Cella) down on the coffee table that was all that stood between Renly and Sansa's family. "She'll already be self-conscious enough about what Joffrey's done to her without having to look at her male counterpart and his near-perfect physique."

Robb snorted in disbelief, but Jon was frowning in agreement.

"They're right," he admitted. "You know what Sansa's like – she won't be able to look at either of you. I think Robin should be the one to go. She might associate me with Val, and Val's hair-"

"That's what Will thought," Loras agreed. "I'll pop over every day to keep an eye on things, but it might be a while before she's ready for visitors."

"She's been working in the Eyrie for months," Robb said suspiciously. "How bad can she be?"

Ed scratched a hand through his hair and sighed.

"Look, I know you don't get it because you and Cella both know from the off, but trust me when I say that triggering someone who consistently undergoes massive trauma the way Sansa does breaks whatever coping mechanisms they've developed and leaves them a mess for a while."

"How would you know-"

"I'm sorry, you have  _met_ my wife's family, haven't you?"

* * *

Rodge added three spoons of sugar to his tea and waited for Will to talk. Sansa was asleep upstairs – the whole house smelled of lavender from the bubble bath Will had bought for her – and Will sat down without glancing up at the ceiling every ten seconds for the first time in four days.

Rodge knew – he'd been here twice a day, every day, since Sansa had arrived.

"Renly and Loras are going to talk to the others," Will said, sounding so thoroughly exhausted that Rodge wondered how he'd react to a lullaby. Sleepily, probably. "And Robb'll hopefully talk to his mother. God, what a mess. What a fucking mess."

Rodge sipped his tea and waited some more. He was good at waiting.

"I can't close my eyes, Rodge," Will said wretchedly. "Every time I do, I see one of them- hurting her. Always hurting her. I can't stand it."

"You'll have to for the time being," Rodge said. "I do understand, Will – I know it's different because Theon's my brother, but I do understand."

Will's head thumped down onto the table between them, and Rodge sipped his tea and waited. There was nothing else he could do.

* * *

Bran blinked up at Robb with those too-big eyes that he never seemed to grow into and nodded.

"I'll talk to Mum," he agreed. "She'll be back in a couple of hours – do you want to stay…?"

"She's still not talking to me," Robb admitted. "She can't stand the sight of Cella, you know that."

Bran shrugged.

"Come round tonight," he suggested, pushing himself away from table. "She'll be a bit more accepting then, I'd say."

Robb watched his brother wheel away for a minute before standing up and heading back for the car. He still needed to make a last-ditch effort to find Arya, after all.

* * *

Fearne Cotton was on the radio when Sansa came downstairs, her hair pulled into a messy plait and one of his jumpers hanging off her, and smiled wanly.

"Morning," she said, taking a seat at the dining table. "What time is it?"

"Nearly noon," he said, setting the kettle to boil and sitting opposite her. "How do you feel?"

She took his hands on the tabletop, twisting her fingers through his and squeezing as tight as she could.

"Not great," she admitted, her smile slipping. "Everything seems to hurt now. I haven't been sore in months, but now…"

"You were blocking it out," he said, shrugging slightly.

"Psychologist now, are we?"

"We handle a disturbing number of domestic abuse cases at work."

They sat there in silence while the kettle bubbled and Fearne chattered about Mumford and Sons and the dishwasher churned in the background.

"I'm sorry," she gushed suddenly, looking at him so earnestly that he couldn't help but take one of his hands from hers and cradle her face. "I'm sorry, Willas, I'm so, so sorry-"

"Whatever for?" he asked, genuinely nonplussed. "Sansa, sweetheart, this isn't your fault, you  _know_ that."

"I should have said no-"

"But you couldn't have," he broke in firmly. "You couldn't have, sweetheart, you know that, don't you?  _I_ would have been terrified of Joff in your position, even before I wrecked my leg."

She lifted her free hand and traced the shape of his mouth with a fingertip.

"Have you ever lied to me, Willas?"

"I try not to. Well, not once I've triggered you, I mean. Which I didn't mean to do the other night, by the way."

She smiled just a bit brighter than before, and even the sudden eruption of Gallows from the radio wasn't enough to spoil Will's mood.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LATE UPDATE IS LATE I'M SO SORRY

Robin arrived on the doorstep that evening with an enormous bag in the crook of his elbow.

"Thought I'd drop by and cook," he said, grinning over Will's shoulder to Sansa, peeping around the kitchen door with wide, frightened eyes. Robin's grin faltered, and he stepped back. "I can come back tomorrow-"

"No, no, Robin," she said hurriedly, coming close to the door and stopping, just in case someone might see her and recognise her. "Oh, come in – if that's alright?" she added, directing the question to Will.

He rolled his eyes. She hadn't fallen into  _them_ again as easily as she usually did, which was understandable, and he found himself coaxing her along as best he could manage.

"Of course it's alright," he told her, gesturing for Robin to head on down to the kitchen while he closed the door. He slipped an arm around Sansa's waist and pulled her close, tucking her head under his chin. "Sansa, you're safe here – nobody comes in unless you want them to, do you understand? If you hadn't wanted Robin to come in, he would have left. It's that simple."

Her hands clutched great fistfuls of his shirt over his shoulder blades and she let out a great big shuddering sigh.

"I know," she whispered. "It's just hard to adjust, that's all."

* * *

He dared to step out of the room while Robin served desert – something chocolatey, of course – to call his grandfather. Sansa hadn't lost her head all through dinner, so he was reasonably confident that she'd survive ten minutes in Robin's company while he made his excuses for missing a full week of work unexplained.

"Don't worry about it, lad!" Pop boomed, so loud that Will held the phone away from his ear. "Loras dropped by and told me how sick you were – damned if you could use a phone with laryngitis anyways! Be back on Monday and we'll say no more about it!"

"Pop-"

"Oh, stop fussing," Pop huffed. "I've known all you know and more for years, daft lad. You getting crippled is my damned trigger, Baelor's too – we'll see you bright and early on Monday morning!"

Sansa laughed in the dining room, and between that and Pop's startling revelation, it was all Will could do not to pass out in relief.

* * *

"You have to remember that this is only the second time I've lived past eighteen," Robin pointed out as the others crowded around him for a report. "But as far as I can see, she's bad but she will get better. I can't offer any more than that."

* * *

Sansa wasn't sure which was worse – the desperate urge to throw herself into Will's arms and just hold on until the day she died, or the abhorrence that made her stomach churn at the thought of being touched because of what Joffrey and his "friends" had done to her, what Petyr had done to her.

She stood hesitantly on the threshold of his bedroom, longing for the comfort of his too-familiar warmth and fearing his nearness just as much, but needing something,  _anything_ to distract from her terrible memory-fuelled nightmares.

"Sansa?" he called sleepily, sitting up and rubbing at his eye before squinting across at her. "Are you alright, sweetheart?"

"I had a bad dream," she said, feeling small and silly and shy. "I'll just- I'll just go-"

"Come here," he said gently, holding out a hand to her and waiting so patiently – it didn't make sense that anyone could be so patient, it really didn't – until she crossed the room and took it. She sat down on the bed, legs tucked underneath herself, facing him, and couldn't quite look him in the eye.

He tipped her head up with gentle fingers under her chin, and there was nothing but that adoration she hadn't quite adjusted to yet in his soft eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, fingers uncurling and splaying over her cheek without thought. He did so much without thought, fitting himself around her at every turn, just like he always seemed to – her memories were still fuzzy, still incomplete, but his devotion was one constant that she never, ever doubted – and she found herself leaning into his hand.

"I want to forget them," she said, suddenly on the verge of screaming. "I wish that I could see through them before, that I could remember without having to be triggered and- and-"

"Ssh, now," he soothed her, his thumb running over and back along her cheekbone, his other hand warm around both of hers. "Oh, sweetheart, I wish I could fix this for you. I wish I could still kill them all for dishonouring you. That would make things so much easier, wouldn't it?"

She managed a laugh, somehow, and crawled into his outstretched arms to lie snuffling against his chest when he lay back against the pillows.

Even through the covers, he was so  _warm,_ so safe and so  _home_ that it ached, and when she began to long for Highgarden – the scent of roses and sunlight reflecting off the river were the only constants, for Highgarden changed as much as they did themselves – she felt so confused, almost as if she were betraying her family and Winterfell _._

"I don't want to see them ever again," she whispered, pressing her face into his neck, where the smell of his skin was strongest – nothing she could put a name to, but it was Willas, just him, as comforting as the gentle murmur of his voice when she edged towards a panic attack. "Never, Willas, don't let them near me."

* * *

Myrcella hummed as she darted towards Tommen's room, flicking through texts from Robb and Renly as she walked, making plans for Sansa without actually ever typing the word "Sansa"-

"Where is she?"

Joffrey was leaning against the wall outside Tommen's room, arms crossed and hair falling over his mad eyes.

"Excuse me?"

"Sansa," he clarified. "Where is she? You're going out with her brother, you're friends with her cousin – where is she?"

"Why on  _earth_ would you think I'd know? Joff, don't you think if Robb knew where Sansa was, he'd have brought her home by now?"

"She's been found," he snarled, stepping closer and looming over her angrily. "I know she has – you haven't looked as scared every time she's mentioned-"

"Fuck off, Joff," Myrcella said derisively. "You really think Robb would tell  _me_ if he knew where Sansa is? If she's even  _alive?!"_

"I  _know_ he would," Joff hissed, so close now that her folded arms touched his chest. "And I want you to tell me. Now."

"Robb knows what you did to Sansa, Joff," Myrcella snapped. "And he's barely speaking to me now because I'm your sister – do you  _really_ imagine-"

"I did nothing she didn't deserve," he said sharply. "She needed to learn her place-"

Myrcella's hand whipped across Joff's cheek, but just as quickly he had her pinned to the wall with her arm bent behind her back.

"Never, ever raise a hand to me again," he whispered against her ear, "or what I did to Sansa will seem like a party to you."

"Dad'll kill you if you lay a finger on me ever again," she gritted out, pushing back against him until he released her. "You know why I've been feeling a bit better about Sansa lately, Joff? Do you? It's because Robb's mum was talking to the police and they reckon she  _must_ be dead if she hasn't been found by now, and you know what? I'd  _rather_ Sansa was dead than see her back in your filthy hands ever again!"

The worst thing was that it wasn't even really a lie, because Loras had managed to sneak Sansa's medical reports away from the doctor's office and the knowledge of what Joff did to Sansa-

She nearly would rather her best friend be dead than be back in Joff's hands. She nearly would.

* * *

"He'll find me," she said, clutching tight to his coat and shaking her head. "I can't, Willas, he'll  _find_ me-"

"Robin will keep an eye out," Will reminded her, stroking her hair and hitting the button to take them up to the Eyrie. "And Mya and Randa, too – Robin's talked to them, you know he has-"

"But Petyr-"

"How many times do I have to remind you?" he teased softly. "I won't let him hurt you, Sansa. I won't let  _anyone_ hurt you."

The doors dinged open, and he guided her slowly out into the café.

"You're only going to be here for a couple of hours, then Jon is coming to pick you up," he reminded her. "Robin's already cleared everything with Randa and Mya-"

"ALAYNE STONE!"

Will stumbled back out of the way as Mya threw herself at Sansa, hugging her tight and checking her over to make sure she wasn't still "ill" – they'd spun some about Sansa having tonsillitis to explain her absence.

Randa, meanwhile, sidled up alongside Will and folded her arms.

"You still haven't shagged her, have you?"

* * *

Sansa hesitated when Jon appeared in the lift, box of smokes sticking out of his pocket, glasses hanging from the neck of his t-shirt and hair everywhere but neat.

He pulled off his coat and tossed it over the back of the chair opposite hers, the white t-shirt like he always, always wore stretching tight over his chest and pulling thin enough to show off the three-headed dragon tattooed in scarlet on his left shoulder.

"Hey," he said in that quiet way, and for a minute he looked so like Dad that she wanted to cry, that she could almost feel Dad's blood and brains warm on her face-

"Hey," she whispered back, pushing across the coffee and warm fruit scone she'd ordered for him. "I picked strawberry jam but then I remembered that you're allergic-"

"It's fine," he said, laying his hand over hers on the table and smiling encouragingly.

"How is…"

_How is everyone_ , she wanted to ask.  _Have you heard from Arya, because you're the one she'd call if she was going to come home. How's Bran, have the doctors given him any hope. Is Rickon still wild, will he behave. How's Mum, God, how're Mum and Robb and has Uncle Ben come home yet._

"Later," Jon promised, sitting back and sipping his coffee. "How are you?"

She twitched, the scars on her back and her thighs and along the sides of her breasts suddenly itchy, but she forced a thin smile.

"Not myself?" she offered, wishing that she'd been closer to Jon growing up. He'd been raised with them at Winterfell after his mother died, after his father was killed in the boating accident and his grandparents and his father's wife and his brother and sister died in that fire that had killed Dad's father and Uncle Brandon. Hell, the more she thought about it the more she felt horrible for not being nicer to Jon-

"I thought you might not be," he admitted, splitting his scone and layering on blackcurrant jam half an inch thick. "I've got a free flat until the day after tomorrow and a lamb casserole like your mum used to make for your birthday waiting in the oven if you'd like to try some. I can't promise it's the same, but I'm pretty sure I figured out what spices she used to use."

"Cinnamon?"

"A little extra just because you like it," he promised her. "I'll pay and then we can go, okay?"

She nodded and he got up to pay while she pulled on her coat and hat and scarf and stuffed her books into her bag-

"Is that  _Jon Targaryen?!"_ Randa whispered, clinging to Sansa's arm and biting her lip. "Damn, Ally, you get all the high flyers!"

"I know his cousin," she said absently, smiling when Jon came back and swung into his coat. "I'll see you later, Randa."


	9. Chapter Eight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic physical and sexual abuse in this chapter and quite probably in ensuing chapters. Just a heads up.

Jon and Val's flat was a converted loft type place, all exposed beams and industrial windows. Sansa had never been there before, had never really spent much time socially with her cousin, but she was glad of it now – if she'd never been there before, she couldn't possibly have attached bad memories to any of it.

The whole place smelled of slow-cooked meat with the tingly bite of cinnamon overlaying it when Jon let her in, and she stood in the entryway just breathing it in for a long moment before following him into the absurdly big and modern kitchen.

"Not much like Winterfell," he offered apologetically, motioning to granite worktops and stainless steel in place of careworn polished pine. "Not as bad as it could have been, though – Val wanted stainless steel throughout."

Jon had inherited vast amounts of money after his father's family was almost completely wiped out – he had an aunt, who lived abroad and only came home for Christmas and her and Jon's birthdays, which feel almost together, but aside from Daenerys he had been the sole heir to the Targaryen fortune, and the  _direct_ heir because his father had claimed him before he died.

Jon was filthy rich, and although he never flaunted it, it showed in things like his designer kitchen and his silly sports car.

"Dad always used tell Mum he'd refit the kitchen like this if she didn't stop visiting Aunt Lysa so often," Sansa murmured, tracing the fancy tap and smiling slightly. Lysa had been ill for a long while during Sansa's final year of school and Mum had spent a lot of time with her, and Dad had missed Mum. He'd resorted to daft threats to try and convince her to stay at home more, even though he knew Mum would only laugh at him and still go to visit Lysa.

"And Cat always took him seriously, too," Jon teased, standing up from the oven and setting an enormous casserole on the hob. "I made enough for eight without thinking-"

"I could eat enough for three at least," Sansa promised him, taking a seat at the high island counter and smiling. "I'm amazed I'm not drooling all over myself already."

* * *

Jon had rented out her favourite film for them to watch.

"You must have got the strangest looks when you went up to the counter with  _Finding Nemo_  and three bags of Malteasers," she laughed, settling into the corner of the couch nearest the door and tucking her feet underneath herself, automatically curling up as small as possible. If Jon found anything about it odd – when they were younger, living at home, she used sprawl out across him and Robb and Arya whenever they watched telly together, or else sit at the foot of Bran's wheelchair and lean her head against his knees – he said nothing, and for that she was grateful.

Then he flicked off the lights and sat down next to her, his arm along the back of the couch behind her shoulders, and everything was abruptly horrible.

* * *

Will threw open the door in response to the manic knocking and almost ended up on his arse when Sansa threw herself into his arms, hiding her face against his chest.

"What in the world-?"

"We were watching  _Finding Nemo,"_ Jon said helplessly, shrugging and pushing his glasses back up his nose. "And she panicked. I didn't mean to-"

"Not your fault," Sansa said, words muffled against Will's shirt. "I'm sorry, Jon, I just- I can't-"

"Ssh," Will soothed, stroking her hair. "We'll call Jon in the morning, shall we? Let him know you're alright?"

She nodded, fingers twisting into the back of his shirt, and Jon sighed.

"I'll talk to you tomorrow then," he conceded, casting one last concerned glance at Sansa before nodding to Will and heading back down the steps. Will shut the door carefully, still stroking Sansa's hair.

"Want to talk about it?" he asked quietly, turning enough to guide her into the living room.

"I- Joffrey used to- he- he hurt me so much," she gulped, and then she was crying and he was more determined than ever to break Joffrey bloody Baratheon.

* * *

_He was always careful not to mark her where it would be hard to cover up. That just meant he made absolutely certain to mark her where she could hide it._

_"You'll like this one," he whispered against the shell of her ear, tracing a razor-sharp knife in feather-light patterns along her rib. The film on the telly, an old black-and-white horror from the 40s, flickered and shone on the silver cuffs holding her wrists to the cast-iron bedframe. "It's an antique."_

_She screamed against the gag when he pressed harder, carving another line to add to the collection below her shoulder blades._

_"Ssh now," he murmured, dragging his teeth over the point of her shoulder. "If you're not careful, my hand might slip."_

_His hand had slipped before, and she never wanted to repeat that. She forced herself to stay as still as possible, even though every instinct was telling her to recoil from the pain._

_"Good girl," he told her when he was finished. He set aside the knife, breathing heavily as he knelt between her legs, spread by the restraints holding her ankles apart. "You've been very good tonight, haven't you?"_

_She screamed again, screamed and screamed and fought as much as she could until he pressed hard against the freshest of her wounds and then she lay there, sobbing in agony as he moved and grunted and stilled._

* * *

Sansa fell asleep on top of him on the couch, and it took a good fifteen minutes to manoeuvre himself out from under her to get to the kitchen so he could call Rodge.

"She broke down, I think," he sighed, running his hand through his hair and putting on the kettle. "Jon seemed almost as frightened as she was, and I… I wonder if I should confront her? Maybe if I make her talk about it…"

_"That could just make her worse, mate."_

"I know, but it might break her reserve – she gets like this, Rodge. She won't open up until something happens to break her control, and-"

_"I know, Will. Give her a while, though – she hasn't been with you long. Take your time, talk it out with Ed. He's the only one with any experience with this sort of thing."_

"Who else is there to talk to?" he said bitterly, emptying the teapot and sighing. "I don't know, Rodge – I just don't know anymore."

* * *

Jon had hoped that the threat of snow would keep Dany in Dubrovnik for another couple of days at least, until they managed to get Sansa calmed down a bit, but Dany being Dany took a train or five and ended up getting the Eurostar from Paris and texting him to come pick her up.

"You seem stressed," she teased, standing up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I'm about to make you even more stressed."

"How is that possible?" he asked, rolling his eyes and taking her case. "Seriously-"

"I remember, Jonny boy," she said, eyes gleaming with something worryingly close to madness. "I remember  _everything,_ and heads are going to roll."

"Dany-"

"You can't tell me you'll be sad to see some of the Baratheons and the Lannisters brought down to size?"

"Some of them, but-"

She touched his face, frowning slightly.

"Is something wrong? Has there been news of Sansa?"

He sighed.

"Something like that," he admitted. "Come on, Val's been looking forward to seeing you since I told her you'd be here for a couple of weeks before Christmas. I think she made cake."

* * *

Mum was holding onto the edge of the table very tightly.

"Why did you not trigger me earlier?" she demanded, not looking at either Robb or Bran.

"I tried," Robb told her. "Weeks ago, I tried, but it didn't take – it did this time. I don't know why."

"But why did you not try  _harder?!"_

"Sansa is safe, Mum," Bran said quietly, wheeling closer to her. "Isn't that the main thing?"

"She's too close-"

"Willas will never allow anyone to hurt her," Robb said firmly. "Jesus, Mum – you've seen him with her in how many lifetimes now, and you still doubt him? He can't help being a fucking Tyrell any more than Myrcella can help being a Lannister."

"Don't curse," she snapped reflexively, still not looking at him. "Why didn't you bring your sister  _home?!"_

"It's easier to keep her away from Joffrey if he doesn't know where she is," Bran pointed out.

"And she's worse than she's ever been, Mum," Robb admitted. "Worse than I've ever seen her. It's… It's not good."

Mum took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"She's safe?"

"Will'd rather die than let anything happen to her," Robb assured her. "She's safe. We're working on making her even safer, but she's safe for now."

* * *

Will was only home twenty minutes when the phone and the doorbell rang together.

"If that's Jon or Rodge, can you answer the phone?" he called back over his shoulder to Sansa as he made for the door. "Tell them I'll only be a minute!"

Cella smiled up at him when he opened the door, her hair scraped up into a bun and a massive portfolio folder tucked under her arm.

"Mind if I come in?"

"Cella, what are you  _doing_ here?" he hissed, stepping outside and closing the door behind him. "Didn't we agree-"

"Yeah, and spending time with Jon worked out  _so well,"_ Cella snapped. "Let me in, Will – Sansa's been one of my best friends for nearly every one of our lifetimes. Let me see her. I'm not my brother."

No, that was true – between the scar she never quite seemed to escape and the fact that Cella's face was a completely different shape to Joff's, the long hair and her taste for bright red lipstick, she didn't look as much like her brother as she might have.

"Let me in, Will."

He hesitated a minute before realising he'd come outside without his key, and they had to knock for Sansa to let them in.

She froze for a second when she saw Cella, but then she smiled faintly.

"You're not carrying anything, are you?" she asked, and Cella smiled in return.

"Just a sketch," she promised, and then Will was left wondering why he'd been so worried about Cella and Sansa seeing one another.

* * *

After they ate, Myrcella spread her sketches out on the coffee table in the sitting room and sat back, clearly awaiting what she saw as Sansa's inevitable approval.

"What are they?" Sansa asked, tracing the swooping lines of delicately thorned rose vines, the muzzle of the wolf hiding among the roses. It was all in shades of grey and olive, soft, muted tones that would look well against Sansa's shockingly pale skin, striking without being too harsh.

"Tattoos," Will said, noting the golden-green rose that would curl over Sansa's left shoulder blade, over her heart, just as the silver-pale one was inked into his own skin. "For you, if you'd like them."

"For my back?" she said slowly, fingers brushing against his as they followed the same swoop of dove grey.

"I can draw up something else if you'd rather leave you back clear," Myrcella offered. "Val wanted to, so she could wear backless dresses."

Sansa nodded without saying a word, splaying her fingers over the wolf.

"You have one?" she asked him, turning to look at him, biting her lip.

"I do," he said, standing up and turning his back to her, tugging his t-shirt up to show her the patterns covering his back from hip to shoulder.

Sansa traced one curlicue, the tip of her finger twisting into the dip of his spine, and he forced down at shudder at her touch on his bare skin.

"Myrcella designed all of our tattoos," Willas explained, pulling back down his t-shirt and sitting down beside Sansa. "The nine of us - Cella and I, Jon, Robb, Edmure, Robin, Renly, Trystane and Rodge - we all have tattoos. Loras, Val, Roslin and Ned have ink as well, to mark that they've been triggered. We just thought that maybe-"

"I can't," Sansa said firmly, keeping her arms crossed and not looking at either of them. Willas glanced helplessly at Cella, who shrugged.

"I know some of what Joff did to you, Sansa," she said hesitantly. "If you want me to design something to hide your scars…?"

Sansa stood up suddenly and spun around, pulling her top up and up to expose her back.

"Think you can hide this, Myrcella? Is there enough ink in the world to hide this?"

Unthinkingly, he reached out and touched her back, splaying his fingers over the ruined skin, the terrible patterns of scars – whip scars and knife scars and burn scars – that destroyed her just as she'd spread her fingers over Myrcella's beautiful drawing.

"I won't be needing a tattoo," she said bitterly, shoving down her top and storming out of the room.

Will stared after her before sighing.

"Do you mind that I'm going to torture your brother before I slaughter him, Cella?"

* * *

"She ran away?"

Cella nodded, pulling his tie tight and settling his collar.

"Her back, Robb… I've never seen anything like it. Never."

Robb lifted a hand and curled his fingers around Myrcella's jaw, stroking the narrow silver-white line of scarring on her cheekbone with his thumb.

"Surely there's some way to convince her we just want to help?"

"She knows that, love," Myrcella assured him, leaning up on her toes to kiss him. "Just like I know you're an idiot for doing this."

Robb held onto her, kissing her for longer than he really had time for. He was an idiot for doing this, but that didn't mean he could say no.

"A Stark has held this seat for forty years," he pointed out. "I would have been running sooner if the enquiry into Dad's murder hadn't taken so long. You know that, Cella – I  _have_ to do this. At least I can't become PM straight away."

"I know, but-"

"I'll be a backbench MP, Cella," he assured her, kissing her forehead and smiling grimly over his shoulder to Jon and, ever-surprisingly, Dany. She'd decided to throw her not-inconsiderable support behind his campaign, and while he didn't fully understand her motives he was thankful for it. "I won't be in any more danger than I am now."

She frowned unhappily, but then she nodded.

"Let's go, then," she said after a moment. "Let's get you elected to Commons, Robb Stark."


	10. Chapter Nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And suddenly it's two weeks before Christmas and the prologue was four months after chapter one, not six! Suddenly there was a cabinet shuffle because I forgot Ned was PM and there would have had to have been a cabinet shuffle!
> 
> SUDDENLY!
> 
> I have lost control of this I'm so sorry.

 

"Robb is running for election."

"That's right."

"And Daenerys is supporting his campaign."

"Yes."

"And Rodrick?"

"He's running for his father's seat, but for the Tories instead of the BNP."

Sansa frowned and wrapped her hands around her mug.

" _Why?"_

Will shrugged and sipped his tea, leaning back in his chair. It was so bizarrely domestic and  _normal_ to be having breakfast with her before he went to work, and he longed to make it permanent. To make it safe for her.

"Well, we can't go to war against the crown, can we?" he pointed out. "However, Commons has the true power now, and so if we have enough people  _in_ Commons…"

"We control the country," she said, sounding surprised that it hadn't occurred to her as soon as he'd told her Robb had put his name forward for their father's seat. "Is the plan to eventually form the cabinet entirely from… From us?"

"Maybe. We're just going to get as many people in as we can – the more voices we have in a position to be heard, the more we can set the framework to remove whatever fragment of power Joffrey might have when he ascends to the throne."

* * *

"You  _will_ get elected, Robb," Dany said around her mouthful of Danish. "Your name alone is enough to get you in."

Jon rolled his eyes as he set a fresh pot of tea on the table, and then he laughed.

"If determination won elections, Dany…"

"I know, I know,  _votes_ win elections," she sighed, sticking her tongue out at him. "And he'll get the votes. You know he will. There's nothing to say he won't."

"Unless someone more popular runs against him," Val teased, ruffling Robb's hair as she walked past, pulling on her coat. "I'll be back in time for dinner, love," she added for Jon's benefit, and he nodded from his place at the cooker and waved as she left for work.

"She's working this close to Christmas?"

Jon shook his head, clearly amused by Dany's oblivousness.

"Not everyone can take two weeks off work before Christmas, Dany," he mocked her, coming back to the table with a plate piled high with French toast. "And besides, Val likes her work, and she doesn't want to take too much time off at the moment."

"Why not?" Robb asked, spoon clinking on the inside of his mug as he stirred in his fourth sugar.

Jon blushed.

"Well, she has to apply for maternity leave, and she wants to do it on a good note."

Dany snorted, trying to laugh and swallow her tea at the same time.

"Aemon right on schedule, I suppose," she gasped, pinching her nose and wincing. "Does that mean you and Myrcella will be bringing us Rickard soon…?"

"And you and Jorah will be giving us Jeor soon, I assume?" Robb sniped back, pointing with his fork. "Don't think you're the only one who remembers – we've known for longer than you, Targaryen. We remember a _lot_  more."

* * *

Sansa hummed as she made her way downstairs, rubbing her once-more red hair with a bath towel and hoping Willas wouldn't mind that the last of her hair dye was coming out on his linens.

Cella had popped over the night before with two boxes of colour stripper and a hair masque for her, as well as some sort of extra-strength cleanser to get the last of the fake tan off her skin, to get her back to herself, and she had to admit that it was nice to look in the mirror and see Sansa, not Alayne. She hoped Willas had been right, that Edmure and Roslin would come over for dinner tonight, because while the idea of seeing Robb still unnerved her (he was still so handsome and she just wasn't beautiful anymore), she was certain she could handle seeing her uncle.

She flicked on the radio as she wandered through the kitchen, wondering if Willas would mind her starting on dinner before he got home – he liked cooking with her, she'd noticed – before crouching down to open the freezer.

"Good afternoon, Sansa."

She jerked upright and spun around, heart in her throat because no, no, he couldn't be here, he couldn't have gotten in without setting the alarm off, Willas always set the alarm when he left the house-

Petyr smiled.

"You've gone back to your natural hair colour, I see."

* * *

Renly frowned as Loras pulled into their usual parking spot just down the road from Will's house, watching the dark car with the tinted windows pull away.

"Don't know that car," he said, quickly taking down the reg plate and texting the number to Trystane. "Hope everything's okay-"

"It'll be fine," Loras said easily, pulling on his ridiculous bear hat and smiling. "Sansa's back with Will, we're setting the wheels in motion to keep her away from the Lannisters, we've got everything in place to start reducing their power – what can possibly go wrong?"

* * *

Westminster had been home to Parliament for a great many years, and Will had always liked it – it felt old and full of history, and had the sort of busy quiet he remembered from half a dozen lifetimes.

"The Old Man's a wreck," Baelor murmured around his pipe stem as they stood on the steps outside, shaking his head. "Reckons Lannister being the King's father-in-law will sway it for him."

"And Lannister's record with the Martells should work against him," Will pointed out, adjusting his tie and sighing. "Jesus, if Pop doesn't get the job-"

"He will," Baelor said easily, checking his watch and slipping it back into the pocket, adjusting the chain and turning to Will. "His record is perfect, he's got an ideal working relationship with the  _current_ PM-"

"Dad's fucking terrified of the Lannisters, though," Will broke in, tugging his coat closer around himself. It was freezing, far too cold to actually be standing out here on the steps, but Baelor wanted a smoke and he had demanded Will's company. "I wouldn't put it past him-"

"Your mother'd leave him if he overlooked the Old Man," Baelor said dismissively, suddenly upending his pipe and tapping the bowl to knock out any embers. "And the notion of Tywin bloody Lannister as AG  _again-"_

"Quiet," Will shushed him, straightening up as Jaime Lannister ( _Kingslayer, sisterfucker)_ came sauntering down the steps with his brother in tow. Will had never liked Jaime, not in any of their lifetimes, but he'd found Tyrion to be far more likeable than any would give him credit for (his behaviour towards Sansa, time and again, helped, of course).

"Hightower, Tyrell," Jaime said, something that looked like a smile but was more of a snarl curling his lip. "Lovely to see the competition."

"I wasn't aware you were involved in this competition, Captain," Will said mildly, leaning heavily on his cane to take his weight off his bad leg – the cold always set it off – and smiling thinly. "As far as I was aware, it was your father and my grandfather being judged on their individual merits – unless you think my father is too weak-willed to make a judgement for the good of the country?"

* * *

Sansa waited until Renly and Loras were gone, until Willas was safely in bed with the door closed, to open the envelope Petyr had given her.

_"It's only a matter of time before Joff finds you, sweetheart," he breathed against the back of her neck, circling her like a carrion crow. "Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to worry about being found? I've got a lovely little place in Tuscany that you'd love. You'd be safe there, Sansa. Joff would never find you."_

It wasn't herself she was worried about should Joff find her – oh, she was still terrified of him, but she knew that if Joff was hurting her, he'd leave everyone else alone.

If he found out that Willas had been hiding her… It didn't bear thinking about.

She opened the envelope, nose wrinkling at the hint of Petyr's aftershave, and emptied it into her lap.

Passport, EHIC, credit cards… All in the name of Alayne Stone.

A plane ticket from City of London Airport to Dublin. A second ticket, this one from Dublin to Rome. She assumed Petyr would have them travel to Tuscany by train, just to make their trail harder to follow.

That was, if she ever actually reached Rome.

She could get out of this. She could save  _everyone,_ herself included.

She pushed everything back into the envelope, tucked it under the mattress where Willas wouldn't see it, and stood up to get ready for bed.

She'd have a busy couple of days if she wanted to get away before Christmas.

* * *

He woke all at once and was on his feet by the time he really registered he wasn't asleep anymore, by which time his bad leg had buckled and he was left clutching at the nightstand as he groped blindly for his stick, because Sansa, Sansa was screaming and he had to get to her  _right now._

She was still screaming when he hobbled into her room, thrashing about in bed with tears running down her cheeks, and he sat as quickly as he could with his leg in the way before taking her hand in his.

"Sansa, you're safe," he called gently, not daring to be rougher lest he hurt her somehow. "Sansa, love, it's me, it's Willas, you're safe here, you're safe, I won't let them hurt you, love."

She gulped awake, surging upright, and when she opened her eyes her face was right there in front of his.

"Willas," she gasped, and then she was kissing him, and he was abruptly aware of the fact that he was wearing nothing but his boxers.

"Sansa, what-"

"I need to- I need to know," she said, breathless and desperate and so beautiful he thought he'd burst with love for her. "I need to know that it can be good, that what Joffrey did, what Petyr did-"

"It is good," he promised her, catching her hands and holding them against his chest, trying his best to ignore just how interested his body had become in favour of preserving Sansa's sanity. "It will be, just- just not like this, Sansa."

"But-"

"I want it to be special," he admitted, feeling like an idiot but needing her to understand. "I want you to want  _me,_ not just an escape from your nightmares."

"I do want you," she insisted, tugging her hands from his grasp and twisting her fingers into his hair, ducking her head to kiss his neck, his shoulders. "Please, Willas," she begged, "I need this-"

"Not like this, you don't," he insisted, trying so damned hard to not react to her mouth and her hands on his skin. "Sansa, stop, please, stop-"

"Don't you want me?"

He took her face in his hands, forced her to meet his gaze.

"It's because I want you so much that I  _have_ to say no," he told her firmly. "Sansa, if I- I'm afraid I'll hurt you, love. I could never live with myself if I hurt you."

"You won't," she insisted, kissing him again and again and again, and he was kissing her back even though he tried to stop. "Please, Willas? For me?"

He let her push him down onto the bed.

"I can't," he said, catching her wrist as she slid her hand down his stomach, the tips of her fingers dipping under the waist of his boxers. "Sansa, I  _can't-"_

"Why not?" she demanded, sitting up and settling across his hips. "You  _want_ to," she pointed out sharply, rocking down against him, pressing down hard, and it took every ounce of his strength not to buck up under her.

"More than anything," he gasped, hands fisting in the quilt, and screwed his eyes shut tight. "But you're not yourself, love, you're not well-"

"Damn you, Willas!" she exploded, slapping at his chest, smacking him hard across the face when he pushed himself up onto his elbows. He froze then, stunned – he could never remember her ever trying to hurt him, not in all their lifetimes – and she froze, too, horrified.

"I- Willas-"

"I know," he said, pushing himself all the way back up to sit face to face with her, easing his arms around her, ready to pull away if she flinched. "I know, love. Come on, back to bed – you need your rest."

He managed to get her back under the covers and was just turning to find his cane when she touched his hand.

"Stay with me?" she begged, cheeks crimson. "Please, Willas. I don't want to be alone."

He slid under the quilt, made sure to stay over the sheet so there was  _something_ between them, and pulled her close.

He could do this. For Sansa, he  _would_ do this.

And in the morning, he'd stop off at Trys' on his way to work and see what was so urgent.


	11. Chapter Ten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very Sansa/Willas heavy chapter. The others feature much more prominently next chapter.

He went to Trys’ first thing the following morning, the scent of Sansa’s hair clinging to his skin even after his shower and shave.

Trys barely spoke and Will was back out the door, hobbling as quickly as he could for his car.

“Too late,” he snarled as he got caught in another jam. “Too _fucking_ stupid to understand-“

 

*

 

Sansa tucked the last of her things into her bag, and then…

“He’ll already hate me,” she decided, tucking Willas’ battered old copy of Pride and Prejudice into her cavernous handbag. She was going to have to leave him behind entirely, lose everything they’d shared across all the years, to keep him safe. She wanted something, _anything,_ to keep him close.

Struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration, she darted across the landing into his room, digging through his wardrobe until she found-

“Thank God he’s not wearing it today,” she sighed, wrapping his favourite scarf around her neck and burying her nose in the smell of him. “Okay, I think that’s everything.”

She slipped back to her own room, gathered up her bags and pulled the envelope from Petyr from under the mattress-

The front door slammed open and slammed shut.

“Sansa?!”

 

*

 

She couldn’t be gone, he couldn’t be too late, he could not lose her, not like this-

“Sansa!” he shouted again, throwing aside his briefcase and making his way upstairs. “Sansa, if you’re here-“

“I’m here,” she said quietly, pulling the door of her room closed behind her and setting down the bags in her hands. “Not for long, but I’m here.”

“Trystane said- Baelish was here. He was in our home.”

She flinched at that, folding her arms defensively – surely she didn’t feel the need to defend herself from him? Didn’t she know he’d never hurt her?

“Why didn’t you tell me, Sansa?” he asked, completely at a loss. Didn’t she trust him to keep her safe? “What did he threaten you with? Sansa-“

“He didn’t threaten me,” she said miserably. “He threatened _you_. I can’t let you get hurt, you _must_ understand that.”

“Why?” he demanded, fists clenching. “Why am I supposed to allow you be hurt? Sansa-“

“Willas,” she said gently, pressing one hand flat to his chest. “Please. For me.”

“Don’t ask this of me,” he begged, covering her hand with his own, letting go of his cane so he could curl his hand around her jaw. “Anything but this, love. Don’t ask me to let you go. I don’t know how to do that.”

“He’ll tell Joffrey where I am,” she whispered, turning her face to kiss his hand. “Last night, it was… It was going to be my goodbye to you, Willas. That’s why I-“

She leaned up and pressed her lips to his, the smallest pressure, but no, he couldn’t lose her, he _couldn’t,_ so he slid the hand on her jaw back into her hair and wound his other arm around her waist, kissing her properly, the way she’d wanted him to kiss her last night.

She pulled back, spun around, but he kissed her neck, under her ear-

 

*

 

"Sansa, please, I can protect you-"

"You shouldn't have to," she told him, ordering herself to pull away even as she sinks back into his arms. "Will, I don't want this anymore," she said more firmly than she would have thought possible wrapped in his arms.

"My family has a holiday home in the south of France," he whispered, his hands peeling away her clothes as he spoke. "I can get documentation for you as Alayne, I can get you to France, Sansa, we can lay low for a while and then who knows where we might go-"

"You can't give up your family for me," she sighed, tilting her head back over his shoulder, shuddering when he slipped a hand under her bra. "Will, Willas, you can't, you can't do that-"

"I don't want them," he said desperately, other hand sliding up under her skirt and tugging aside her knickers just enough. "Not if I can't have you, Sansa, I don't want anything if I can't have you."

"Stop," she begged, not sure what it is she wants him to stop. "Will, I can't do this to you, you have a life here, family and friends and everything you could need-"

He turned her suddenly, holding her face (one hand is sticky and damp from being in her knickers, but she barely notices that).

"If I can't have you - as Sansa Stark or Alayne Stone or whoever the hell you need to be to be safe - then I don't want anyone else. I don't want any _thing_ else, Sansa - why can't you believe that?"

She believed him, that was the problem, that was why she had to get out of there as quickly as possible and get on the plane that would take her to Dublin and then on to New York, the plane that would take her away from Joff and his mad family and get her to something that might become safety-

There were tears in Will's eyes, though. She hated that she had to hurt him so much to have even this much of him.

She kissed him once more, straightening her clothes as she stepped away, and shook her head.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, lifting her bags and running and knowing that he can't catch her, not with that bum knee of his.

 

*

 

He stood and stared after her for a long moment before quite calmly bending down, picking up his cane, and walking slowly back downstairs.

He used the house phone rather than his mobile to call work, and if Baelor – head of the practice now that Pop was AG – knew that something was wrong, knew that Will was lying, he didn’t call him out on it.

Then, that taken care of, Will found the bottle of scotch Ed had hidden behind the bleach under the sink, took a tumbler from the crystal press, and downed a triple measure in one swallow.

Only then did he take out his phone and call Rodge.

 

*

 

“Sansa’s running,” Renly said, “no- Cella, shut your fucking mouth for half a minute and do as your told! You and Robb take Heathrow, Jon and Val are covering Gatwick, Rodge and Ed are taking Luton, Loras and I have City – now get in your fucking car and get to fucking Heathrow!”

 

*

 

The clock on the wall beside the fridge ticked incessantly.

Will threw his glass into it.

 

*

 

London City Airport was the smallest of London’s five, and Sansa was fairly certain that was why Petyr had chosen it for her to fly from.

She was just about to check in (Air France flight 553 to Dublin) when she heard the wolf-whistle, and then she knew.

Petyr had never meant to get her to safety.

This was all an elaborate revenge for running away from him.

This was all a power play, because like hell he wouldn’t be rewarded for betraying her.

She lifted her chin, offered up one last prayer for Willas’ safety, and turned to face her doom.

“Hello, Joff,” she said quietly, tearing her ticket in half three times and letting the shreds drift to the floor at her feet. “Miss me?”


	12. Chapter Eleven.

Robb and Myrcella were stuck in traffic, still a good hour and a half from Heathrow, when Robb’s phone rang.

“Renly? What is it?”

_“Loras and I just saw Joffrey and his goons dragging Sansa out of the airport, we’ll do our best to follow but-“_

“We’ll turn back,” Robb agreed, spinning his finger in Myrcella’s direction. She gestured wildly at the locked traffic on either side of them, and Robb pointed towards the turn that would bring them somewhere (he didn’t know where, the streets of London remained a mystery to him) that hopefully wasn’t as jammed.

“Fucking Joffrey,” she swore, cutting across two lanes of traffic and breaking the speed limit, too. “I’m going to castrate him with a rusty fucking knife, and then I’m going to cut his fucking face off-“

 

*

 

“What do you mean – how could Joffrey have known where she was?” Val demanded, slamming shut the door of the car and pulling on her seatbelt as Jon tugged the keys from his tight pocket. Val set her phone to speaker before speaking again. “Cella would never have tipped him off-“

 _“Littlefinger, we think,”_ Loras said, and she could almost see him running his hand through his silly curly hair. “ _At least, that’s what Renly thinks – we haven’t told Will yet.”_

“Don’t,” Jon said firmly, backing out of their space too quickly and nearly ramming into a Renault Clio. “Don’t tell him, not yet – we need to see if we can get Sansa back, first.”

 _“We’re already on it,”_ Loras told them, _“we’re following Joff’s car now- Shit! Renly, you’re the king’s brother, run the light!”_

 

*

 

“We need you to track Joff’s car,” Ed said again, gritting his teeth as Rodge turned something dangerously close to a hairpin at right about twice the speed limit. “Now, Trystane – this can’t wait!”

_“It’ll take a while to get a lock on the signal – and did Myrcella even plant the tracker? Jesus, Edmure, I-“_

“Of course she planted the damn thing!” he shouted, grabbing at the dash as, even with his seatbelt, he was nearly thrown from his seat. “Now track the fucking car, Trystane!”

 

*

 

Trystane dropped his phone while it was still ringing, and Renly’s voice rasped through the tinny speaker before he managed to pick it up.

“He’s at Will’s place!” he said frantically, pushing away from his desk and motioning for Ned to come with him. “Joffrey is at Will’s place!”

 

*

 

Rodrick’s phone rang while he was tearing through Chelsea and earning horrified shouts and shrieks all around.

“Answer that, Ed,” he said impatiently, zipping through a red light that was only barely red. “Quickly.”

_“Ah, Edmure. Could you put me onto Rodrick, please?”_

Ed held Rodge’s phone up to his ear, confused.

“Will?”

 _“It looks like this is goodbye, my friend,”_ Will said, sounding oddly resigned. “ _Joffrey just pulled up outside. He has some of his friends with him. I rather think I’m going to be punished for keeping Sansa safe this past couple of weeks.”_

“We’re nearly there-“

_“Goodbye for this turn, Rodrick. Till next we meet.”_

 

*

 

Will hung up, quickly set his phone to record, and set it on the kitchen counter. The police would surely go through his phone when he was found dead, wouldn’t they?

There was a knock – more a bang, really – on the front door, and he made his way out of the kitchen, pausing to touch the scarf Sansa had left behind that he had draped over the bannister at the bottom of the stairs.

He set his hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

His eyes went wide.

“Sansa!”

 

*

 

Myrcella crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently, giving the police officer the glare for which her mother was famous.

Robb leaned sheepishly against the bonnet of the car and stared determinedly at his shoes.

“You were doing almost thirty miles above the speed limit,” the constable said, scribbling in a notepad. “Your highness-“

“Yes, yes, now give me my speeding ticket and let me be on my way,” Myrcella said impatiently. “I have somewhere important to be-“

“You and Mr. Stark are in serious trouble,” the constable interrupted. “This isn’t your car, is it, ma’am?”

“I- no, of course not. It’s Robb’s, isn’t it?”

“Are you insured to drive it?”

“What- I-“

“I have open insurance,” Robb said desperately, lifting his head at last. “And Cella’s been a named driver since she got her licence – now please, can we go?”

Myrcella frowned sharply.

“I know you,” she said. “You used to work for my grandfather. Are you even a real policeman?”

“I- well-“

“I thought not,” she said dismissively. “Mother sent you to bring me home, didn’t she?”

“I-“

“Goodbye, sir,” Myrcella said firmly, climbing back into the car, honking the horn when Robb didn’t immediately follow her, and pulling away before the poor copper had a chance to blink.

“He is a real policeman,” she said. “I remember him being there the night Grandfather was accused of murdering those Reyne people, but he’s obviously one of Grandfather’s extensive network of lackies. Thank God he was easily frightened.”

 

*

 

“Fucking roadworks,” Rodge growled, turning so sharply that Ed was sure two wheels lifted off the road. “Bloody _fucking_ roadworks, and in _Chelsea!”_

“They do happen-“

“Why today?!” Rodge exploded. “Why _now?!_ Call Renly, see where him and Loras are.”

 

*

 

“We lost them on the way, but we guessed where they were going,” Renly told Ed. “We’re nearly there, about twenty minutes away-“

 

*

 

Sansa stumbled into Willas’ arms when Joff pushed her forward, and she automatically clutched at him, pressed closer when Joff and Meryn and Sandor stepped through the door and shut it behind them.

“So it’s true,” Joff said, his voice as soft as it always was when he was planning pain. “She really did spread her legs for the cripple. I did wonder at Baelish’s intel… It seemed improbable, I admit.”

Willas’ arm slid around her waist, holding her closer still, and her fingers tightened their grip on his shirt.

“I didn’t-“ she stopped herself, knowing that there was no point. Joff could never understand her relationship with Willas – she hadn’t understood it herself until she’d forced herself to give it up, not really, because the pain of leaving him had nearly broken her, nearly sent her crawling back to him to beg forgiveness for ever being stupid enough to leave him.

Joff looked at her, and suddenly she understood why he’d brought her here.

He didn’t want to make Willas watch as she was hurt.

He wanted to make her watch him hurt Willas.

“You should have known better than to try and take her, Tyrell,” he said quietly, reaching out and pulling Sansa back to him by the arm. Willas’ face was completely blank, but when his eyes flashed to hers she could see how close to panicking he was. “Sansa’s _my_ plaything. You should remember that.”

“She’s no one’s plaything,” Willas said, matching Joff’s tone almost perfectly.

Joff’s grip on her arm tightened sharply, and then he shoved her down the hallway towards the kitchen, shoved her onto one of the high stools at the counter. Meryn and Sandor pushed Willas ahead of them, Meryn laughing when Willas’ bad leg caused him to trip.

He stood tall and straight and blank-faced when they let him stop, staring straight into Sansa’s eyes. She wanted to touch him, to plead with Joff, but that would only make things worse for both of them.

Meryn’s foot slamming into Willas’ bad knee took her completely by surprise all the same, and she would have thrown herself at him had Joff not taken her by both shoulders and held her on the stool as Willas crumpled to the floor, gasping in agony – and it was agony, she could see that from how wide his eyes were, how quiet he was, because he the quieter he was the worse the pain, how else would he survive every single day without going to pieces, without screaming? – and then, and then-

“Watch,” Joff snarled, holding her chin in his hand so she couldn’t look away from Meryn and Sandor kicking the snot out of Willas. “Keep watching, slut,” he ordered. “This is your fault, you know. If you’d just been a good little whore and stayed put like I told you to-“

“No,” she said, straining against his hold as Willas’ eyes drifted shut, as he went limp. “No, please, you’ll kill him, please stop, please-“

His leg, oh God, his bad leg was a ruin, worse than anything Sansa remembered from any of their lifetimes, and-

“Come on then,” Joff said smoothly, pulling her out of her seat and ignoring her struggles as she tried to get back to Willas, to do something to help him, protect him, _anything,_ “you and I have some catching up to do.”

She didn’t even scream. What was the point?

 

*

 

Robb expected Myrcella to slow down when they came to Will’s street, but instead she swore in brilliant Technicolor and pressed down on the accelerator.

“Cella-“

“That’s Joff’s car,” she snapped, gesturing to the long, sleek sports car with tinted windows and no plates. “I’m going to murder my brother, and then, because he loves that car, I’m going to douse it in petrol and set it alight. Call Renly and Rodge and tell them that we’ve got Joff, but they need to get here for Will.”

“What? If Joff is gone-“

“There’s a standard issue secret service car parked outside Will’s,” she said, tyres shrieking as she took a corner a mite too sharply. “Joff’s minders are still in there, but we have to get to Sansa.”

 

*

 

Loras didn’t even bother closing the door of the car or turning off the engine or anything, he just stopped in the middle of the road outside Will’s and was off, bounding up the steps and slamming through the front door, Renly on his heels, and before Meryn Trant or Sandor Clegane could react, Loras had taken Trant to the floor, succeeding in cracking the bigger man’s head against the coffee table and taking him out of commission, and Renly’s fist had slammed into Clegane’s unscarred cheek and startled him enough for Renly to get the drop on him and knock him out.

Loras knelt at Will’s side, frantic, helpless, while Renly dragged Joff’s goons to the other side of the room and used the tiebacks from the curtains to hogtie them.

 

*

 

“Where are you headed, do you think?”

_“It looks like – it looks like he’s going to Uncle Jaime’s place, do you know where that is?”_

Jon and Val didn’t, so Myrcella rattled off an address to an accompaniment of squealing brakes, and then hung up so Jon could make a U-turn and head for Jaime Lannister’s.

 

*

 

 

Rodge and Ed pushed into the kitchen together, and almost immediately Edmure had to turn to the sink and get sick.

“I don’t know what to do,” Loras said wretchedly, gesturing to Will miserably. “Do I move him? Don’t they say you shouldn’t?”

“An ambulance is on its way,” Renly added. “And the police, to take those two into custody.” He waved at Clegane and Trant, still out cold under the bay window that looked out over the back garden.

Rodge knelt down beside Loras, frowning heavily, and then, without any warning, poked hard at the torn skin on Will’s left knee.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed, when Will didn’t stir at all. “Oh, shit on a fucking stick. Shit.”

 

*

 

Jon and Val reached Jaime’s place about five minutes after Robb and Myrcella, and they weren’t even out of the car before Myrcella was stomping up to the door.

“She’s not going to knock and expect Joffrey to let us in, is she?” Val asked incredulously.

“No,” Robb said, smiling grimly. “She has a key, too.”

The door opened. Val stayed back with the cars, Jon having managed to convince her that the baby wouldn’t be safe near Joffrey, and Jon and Robb followed Myrcella inside.

“He’ll be upstairs,” she whispered. “He sees nothing to be ashamed of, so he wouldn’t hide in the cellar, and he wouldn’t have enough comfort downstairs. If I know him, and I do, he’ll be in Uncle Jaime’s room.”

He was in Jaime’s room, the master bedroom, stripped to the waist with his trousers open so he could get himself off while he whipped Sansa’s back with a belt, making sure the buckle connected with her skin every time he called her a slut.

Robb saw red, and Joffrey never saw him coming.


	13. Chapter Twelve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for discussion of sexual and physical violence.

“Loras, go with Will in the ambulance-“

“Sorry, lads, there’s not room for any of you,” the paramedic called back over his shoulder as he and his partner slid Will’s trolley into the back of the ambulance. “Not with the work we need to do to get him stable. Follow on behind us, yeah?”

“My car is bigger,” Rodge said, already striding down the street to where he’d pulled in. “Come on, if we want to keep with them we have to leave now!”

 

*

 

“You _bastard,”_ Robb snarled, one knee pressed between Joffrey’s shoulder blades as he ground the little shit’s cheek into the thick carpet. “You vile little _monster-“_

“Let him up,” Jon said, forcing his phone back into his pocket. “Ambulance and cops are on the way. They shouldn’t be long.”

Val and Myrcella were untying Sansa, making quiet, soothing noises as they unlocked the heavy cuffs holding her to the bedframe, stroking her hair (now only to her chin, the length was scattered on the floor around the shears Joffrey had obviously used to cut it) and avoiding the horror of her back at all costs.

Myrcella slid a pair of boxers – Joffrey’s, but that couldn’t be helped – up Sansa’s legs as Val held her head in her lap and kept her as calm as possible.

But Sansa, Sansa had her arms around Val’s waist and she was making the sort of noises a dog made after it was kicked, horrible little whines and whimpers, and she kept her eyes shut tight.

Jon sat on the edge of the bed beside her, kept his hands clasped in front of him.

“Sansa, if I give you my shirt, will you let Val and Cella help you into it, sweetheart?”

She nodded, cracking one eye open to look at him.

“It’s just me,” he soothed her, unbuttoning his shirt and slipping it off, leaving him in just his t-shirt, passing it to Myrcella without looking away from Sansa. “Just Jon. I’m here now, sweetheart, me and Robb and Val and Cella – we won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She wailed and pressed her face into Val’s belly, but she unwound her arms for just long enough for Myrcella to slip Jon’s shirt into place, to cover her poor back.

“Is Willas…?”

“He’s alive,” Robb said quietly. “He is alive, Sansa.”

 

*

 

As it turned out, Will was only very barely alive – he was already being rushed to surgery by the time Rodge and Renly and Ed and Loras burst through the Casualty doors.

“The police wish to speak with you- Aren’t you the king’s brother?”

Renly bit back a curse.

“Yes, and this is the Prime Minister’s son, now can you please tell us how the Prime Minister’s _other_ son is?!”

The nurse huffed and looked affronted, but Ed stepped in – charming, smiling Ed – and murmured something in her ear, and she nodded just slightly.

“He’s in surgery,” she said, glancing over her shoulder furtively. “The paramedics think his back might be broken, and he’s got serious cranial trauma. Triage at its worst – whoever did this to him knew how to hurt someone.”

Rodrick frowned, looking dangerously like his uncle Euron for a split second.

“They aren’t the only ones,” he said quietly, and Renly wondered how they ever doubted that Rodge was entirely Greyjoy.

 

*

 

“Jon,” Sansa said in that tiny voice when Robb made to climb into the ambulance with her. “Please, Jon, please-“

“I’m here, sweetheart,” he said softly, clapping Robb on the shoulder in apology. “I’m right here, don’t you worry, I’ll stay with you as long as I can, I promise-“

She clutched blindly at his hand, hissing when the paramedic cut up the back of Jon’s shirt to expose her back.

“Here, mate, c’mere and talk to me,” said the driver, a man a bit older than the woman cutting the shirt on Sansa apart, who introduced herself as Dixie. “I’m Jeff, c’mere, tell us your sister’s name-“

“She’s my cousin,” Jon said. “Her name’s Sansa – Sansa Stark.”

“Ned Stark’s girl?! Hasn’t she been missing for months?”

“Yeah, we’ve been hiding her – trying to stop this from happening.”

“Who’s the blonde? Didn’t recognise him with all the blood.”

“Her ex,” Jon said, reaching back and taking Sansa’s hand when she made another of those wailing sounds. “Prince of Wales.”

“You’re not serious,” Jeff the ambulance man said. “You’re takin’ the mick, aren’t you?”

“I wish I was,” Jon said, sticking his hand over the back of the seats. “Jon Targaryen. Nice to meet you.”

 

*

 

Renly was sitting with his arm around Loras’ shoulder, Ed and Rodge standing in front of them with paper mugs of appalling tea in their hands, when the rest of the Tyrells, including Loras and Will’s grandmother, stormed through the doors in that over-dramatic way of theirs that always made Will roll his eyes.

“What in God’s name is going on?” Mace demanded, rounding on Rodge because Rodge’s last name was Greyjoy more than because he was Will’s best friend. “We got a call to say Willas had been rushed to hospital-“

“He’s in surgery,” Rodge said flatly. “They think his back might be broken, and his head is cracked up pretty bad. We don’t know any more than that, because they won’t tell anyone anything because we’re not his next of kin.”

“Well, I’ll soon sort that out-“

“You’re not his next of kin either, sir.”

“Well who bloody well is?”

“Baelor,” Loras said, not lifting his head. “Uncle Baelor. He’s on his way, him and Pop and Malora.”

“Why on earth would Malora-“

“She loves Will,” Loras said. “One of the few people she can stand. Leave it, Dad. Baelor’ll be here soon and we’ll know all.”

The waiting room was barely big enough to hold all of them, but Olenna and Alerie and Marg were quick to claim seats, as was Garlan’s girlfriend (wife-to-be, even if they didn’t know that yet) Leonette.

And then Robb, Jon, Val and Myrcella came in, ashen-faced and all three blood-stained.

Renly looked down at his own clothes and realised that Will’s blood was there, in Loras’ handprints and seeping into the hems of his jeans, and he felt sick.

“We found her,” Robb said, his voice hollow. “I’m being charged with assault on a member of the royal family, but we found Sansa.” He laughed suddenly. “Looks like I won’t be sitting in the Commons, I suppose.”

Ed wrapped an arm around Robb, and they all fell silent again.

Then Baelor and Leyton and Malora burst in, all in power suits that said they’d come straight from the office, Baelor chewing on the stem of his unlit pipe.

“Right,” he announced. “Show me a doctor and we’ll see what’s going on with our Willas.”

 

*

 

It turned out that there was quite a _lot_ going on with Will, but Robb didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about that, not when Mum came sprinting into the hospital, Rickon at her side and Arya, Arya returned from wherever she’d spent the past four months with fucking Gendry of all people – now was not the time for Myrcella’s family drama – in tow, pushing Bran’s wheelchair ahead of her.

“She’s in surgery, Mum,” he said, holding her close as Jon lifted Arya clean off the ground and Val began to comfort Rickon, chat to Bran. “She- there was so much blood, Mum, I thought we were too late because she wasn’t even screaming-“

“Ssh,” Mum murmured, stroking his hair as he began to cry, panic overwhelming him all at once and breaking his resolve. “We have her back, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

 

*

 

“Dad being killed,” Arya said, accepting a sandwich from Jon with a smile. “That’s my trigger. I was coming to meet him and Sansa for lunch, they had Joffrey with them and some of his people and some of ours… I was across the street with Yoren. He didn’t know who he could trust, he trusted the wrong people, I ran away and met Gendry.” She smiled slightly. “Me calling him stupid is his trigger, apparently.”

Jon smiled fondly, ruffling her short hair and sighing.

“Sansa’s going to be in a bad way when she wakes up,” he warned. “You’re going to have to actually behave with her for a while, at least. Can you manage that?”

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” she asked incredulously. “Sansa and I might fight, but she _is_ my sister, Jon. I do love her, you know.”

 

*

 

They were all sitting in the waiting room – Tyrells and Starks and friends and family – when Sansa’s surgeon came in looking for Mum. Robb made to go out with her, and so did Jon, and Mum sighed and motioned for both of them to follow her.

“Sansa’s injuries are… Extensive,” Dr Luwin admitted. “She’s going to need further surgery, but she should recover from everything provided she does as we tell her.”

Mum sagged back against Robb at that, clutching blindly for Jon’s hand in her relief.

“But,” Dr Luwin went on, “we did a rape test. It came up positive, Mrs. Stark. If what Robb and Jon told the police is true, there’s no way the prince could have raped Sansa between bringing her to Captain Lannister’s and them walking into the room – which means he did it before then. He and Sansa were, as far as the police can discern, brought to Willas Tyrell’s in a secret service car driven by Meryn Trant, which means…”

“He raped her in front of that creature?” Mum asked in horror, and Robb knew from the set of Jon’s jaw that he regretted not letting Robb beat the little bastard to death. “He-“

“She has lesions, scar tissue, that indicate that this wasn’t the first time she’s been abused in this way,” Dr Luwin said gently. “And the other scarring… We can remove it, surgeries and skin grafts, but I’m afraid it’s Sansa’s mental health I’m most worried about. I’ll be referring her for a psych eval when she wakes up. There’s a good chance she will be a different person to the girl you remember, Mrs. Stark.”

Sansa was lying on her front, her head turned to the side and her hair scraped back in a little cotton cap. She was naked, as far as Robb could see, but she was wrapped in so many bandages that it didn’t really matter – from her shoulders right down to the backs of her knees, she was just a sea of white. Joffrey had broken her nose and split her lip and left her with two black eyes, but they’d set her nose so he supposed that that would heal as well as the rest. He hoped it would.

Mum made a little keening noise and descended on the chair at the bedside, holding Sansa’s hand – the one without the drip – and stroking her cheek.

“My beautiful girl,” she said, voice thick with tears. “Why did you not tell me what he was doing to you?”

 

*

 

It was another two hours before Will’s doctor came looking for his family.

“We did all we could,” he said tiredly. “But he’s not in great shape.”

“What does that mean?” Baelor snapped, looming brilliantly despite not being as tall as the doctor.

“It means we can’t be sure if he’ll wake up when the anaesthesia passes. We had to put him on a ventilator because one of his broken ribs punctured a lung, which was no mean feat considering we had to wire his jaw and splint his nose, too. Between the pneumothorax and the cranial trauma… It’ll be a couple of days before we can really register brain activity, so we can tell if he’s comatose or in a vegetative state. If he’s vegetative, he’s on life support and the decision is yours, Mr Hightower. If he’s not, he’ll stay on the ventilator until we feel he’ll be able to breathe unaided.”

“But he could wake up?” Garlan said desperately. “There’s a chance?”

“A good change,” the doctor assured them. “But you must be prepared for the worst – even if Willas is comatose, which is the best case scenario right now, we have no way of predicting how long he’ll remain so. And…” The doctor sighed. “And even if he does wake up, he’s going to have to deal with never being able to walk again. His spine is a mess – whoever kicked him in the back knew what they were doing.”

Will’s hair was gone. That was the first thing Renly registered when he and Ed and Rodge got into the room, after Will’s family had come in and raged at the injustice of fate, and then gone to organise their affairs.

Will’s hair, his pride and joy, not quite as curly as Loras’ but darker, thicker, shinier, more like Marg’s, was gone. They’d had to shave his head to work on injuries.

Even if he’d had his hair, he would barely have been recognisable. His nose had been broken horribly, and even with the nasal splint, and his whole face was a mess of swelling and bruises. His left arm was casted from the shoulder to the wrist, and his right arm was pinned across his chest – broken collarbone, Renly noted absently – and there were wires and bandages and sticky patches and bruises, bruises everywhere, covering all the skin that was visible as far as the blanket draped over his hips. Renly could make out the shape of a cast under the blankets, on Will’s left leg, his bad leg, and wondered if his broken back would mean his leg wouldn’t heal properly.

And then there was the ventilator. Considering it could, worst case scenario, be the only thing keeping Will alive, Renly had expected it to be more threatening. It looked exactly as they did on telly, a thick tube of white plastic that thinned just before it went into Will’s mouth and down his throat, stretching back to a machine that wheezed softly in the background, keeping a syncopated sort of time with the blip-blip-blip of the heart rate monitor.

“He has to wake up,” Ed said quietly. “He’s Will. He _has_ to wake up.”

“He might not,” Rodge said. “He thinks he lost Sansa completely just before he ended up like this. Will’s whole life, his whole existence, it’s all wrapped up in that girl. He bought that house because he knew she’d like it, read law because it’s a good steady job that pays very well and has decent working hours, usually. He wears his hair the way he does because that’s how she likes it, learned to cook all the things she likes – he doesn’t know how to exist without her. He’s spent his whole life this time preparing to be her husband, Ed, and he thinks he lost her. They say healing is a mental thing as well as a physical thing – if he has no hope, how’s he supposed to heal?”


	14. Chapter Thirteen.

Arya was the only one in the room when Sansa woke up.

“Hey,” was all she said, smiling the little smile she’d always saved for when she’d broken Sansa’s favourite doll or ripped her favourite dress. “Looks like you’ve been through the wars.”

Sansa managed a smile, a tiny one, and reached out for Arya’s hand.

“We thought you were dead,” she said, her voice hoarse. It obviously hurt for her to talk, so Arya took the cup of ice chips the nurses had left and helped Sansa take a couple of them.

“Better?”

“A bit.”

“We thought you were dead yesterday,” she pointed out, tucking Sansa’s hair behind her ear. “Robb called and told us you were on your way here…”

“Willas?”

“He’s alive,” Arya promised her. “He’s not come round yet, and he’s… He’s in pretty bad shape, San. Really bad.”

 

*

 

“Come on,” Renly said, coaxing Loras away from Will. “You need to sleep.”

“M’fine,” Loras insisted, swatting at Renly’s hands and sitting down again twice as firmly. “M’stayin’ if Garlan is.”

“Garlan went home to get some sleep nearly an hour ago,” Renly told him gently. “Come on, love, what use are you if you can’t see straight?”

“Time?”

“It’s nearly three in the afternoon. You’ve been awake for thirty-two hours. A shower and a nap, yeah? Then I’ll bring you straight back, I promise.”

The heart monitor went blip-blip-blip and Rodge stepped aside to let them leave the room, watching the ventilator with something dangerously close to murder in his eyes.

 

*

 

Joffrey had been moved immediately to a private medical facility – both Sansa and Willas were simply too badly injured to move just yet, whereas he only had a broken nose and cheekbone and a mild concussion to worry about – and he was currently reclining against a mountain of fluffy white pillows, his parents standing to one side, Tommen and Tyrion standing to the other, and his grandfather standing at the foot of the bed.

“I want them punished for this,” he fumed, gesturing angrily to his ruined face. “That bastard Stark-“

“You idiot,” Tywin said coldly. “Your personal bodyguards were arrested for either GBH or attempted murder on the Prime Minister’s son yesterday. _You_ only avoided being brought straight to the nearest police station because you need medical attention. Do you realise that people are beginning to wonder if you had something to do with Ned Stark’s death?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Cersei snapped. “He’s the Prince of Wales-“

“If he’s charged with aggravated assault, kidnap, conspiracy to commit murder, and rape, he shouldn’t be allowed near the throne – he _can’t_ be allowed near the throne. He’ll have to be removed from the succession-“

“That’s absurd!” Cersei exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “He is the heir-“

“And he’s a sick, twisted little worm that I’m ashamed to call my son,” Robert said, voice icy cold and eyes like shards of winter.

Silence.

“You’re not my heir anymore,” he said. “After what you did to Ned’s girl, I’d be happy to see you rot in prison for the rest of your days. Strangeways’d be too good for you.”

“You can’t-“

“I’m not pretending like I never got in a fight,” Robert snarled, leaning across the bed and planting his hands on either side of Joffrey’s head. “But I never took pleasure in hurting someone, you little _shit.”_

He stood back up.

“And we’ll take our legal counsel from the Attorney General, Lannister,” he said shortly, pushing past Tywin. “Tommen, come with me – we have to see if Hightower has time to speak considering his grandson is lying half-dead in a coma because of my fuck of a son.”

Cersei, Tywin and Joffrey watched in amazement as Tommen followed Robert from the room with a shrug, and Tyrion laughed.

“Well,” he said. “I believe my skills are needed elsewhere. I’ll find my darling niece and see if I can’t find some way of redeeming this mess, shall I?”

 

*

 

“How is she?”

Robb spun on his heel as he left Sansa’s room, surprised to see Myrcella lurking just down the corridor.

“She’s awake,” he said, shrugging and joining her in the murk of the stairwell. “She’s drugged out of her mind to help cope with the pain, and she keeps asking if she can see Will. She doesn’t like me or Mum or Ed coming to close, seems most comfortable with Jon and Arya and Bran. If she hears anything metallic she flinches. She tried to rip her drip out as soon as she noticed it, and she got herself into such a panic over her ID bracelet that they had to cut it off.”

“Jesus,” Myrcella breathed, stepping into Robb’s arms when he held them out to her. “Jesus.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Yeah.”

 

*

 

“I’m advising you here and now to not protest any of the charges that will be brought against your son,” the Old Man said, Baelor standing to his right and Malora standing to his left, all three with their arms crossed and their glasses sitting low on their noses. “There is CCTV evidence that your son was in Mr. Tyrell’s house yesterday with Mr. Clegane and Mr. Trant, with Miss Stark as a hostage – because it’s quite clear there was nowhere she wanted to be less – and there is audio evidence that he instigated the assault on Mr. Tyrell and planned further assault on Miss Stark.”

Robert looked to Tommen, who sighed.

“Sansa’s not the only one Joff abuses, Dad,” he admitted, pulling up his shirt to show the pattern of what could only be cigarette burns spanning his ribcage. “He’s never laid a hand on Cella because of Robb, not that I know of, but Margaery…”

Robert caught the look on Baelor Hightower’s face and was abruptly glad that the famed Old Man was on his side in all of this.

 

*

 

“I can have them killed and nobody will ever know,” Rodge said suddenly when it was just him, Ed and Renly sitting around Will’s bed. “My uncle, he’s good at that sort of thing. I’ve tried to keep away from that side of my family, but this…”

“That’d make us no better than them,” Ed said tiredly. “No, we’ll do this legal – Baelor has offered to represent Sansa, as her KC…”

“But they’ll be up against Tywin and Kevan Lannister,” Renly put in, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fucking hell, this is going to be a mess.”

Rodge barked a laugh, dry and completely devoid of even the tiniest morsel of humour.

“It’s not already?”

 

*

 

Arya was the only one there when Sansa started to scream.

“San!” she whispered, taking Sansa’s fisted hand in her own and squeezing gently. “San, Sansa, it’s me, it’s Arya, you’re safe here, you’re in the hospital, you’re safe-“

But Sansa just kept screaming, thrashing about in the bed, and Arya ran for a doctor, a nurse, anyone who could help because she had to get out because she couldn’t handle seeing Sansa, composed, beautiful Sansa, reduced to this.

If Joffrey Baratheon got off, Arya would kill him. It wouldn’t be the first time, she knew, now that she had her memories.

 

*

 

Margaery sat beside Loras and across from their grandfather with her head in her hands.

“I didn’t want to!” she insisted, fingers twisting into her hair so tight her knuckles turned white. “I didn’t, I swear, but he- he wouldn’t listen! He wouldn’t take no! I tried to stop him, but- but-“

Loras held her closer, pulling her against his chest, and wondered if anyone would _honestly_ object to him skewering Joffrey fucking Baratheon.

 

*

 

Baelor Hightower arrived at his office late that afternoon, Malora with him, discussing how best to approach the Stark vs. Baratheon case, when his assistant knocked on the door.

“Sorry, sir, but this arrived for you early this morning,” she said, handing over an enormous padded envelope. “No name, no address – we had it scanned, just to be sure. Seems to be a couple of CDs and some flash drives.”

Baelor nodded, turning the envelope over in his hands.

It was sealed with a blob of red wax stamped with a hissing snake.

“The Vipers,” he said reverently, beckoning Malora closer and shutting the door. “What on earth are the country’s top hackers doing, sending us stuff? Last time we had anything from the Vipers was-“

“Proof that the Lannisters were involved in the Targaryen fire,” Malora agreed. “Christ, Baelor, we have to tell Dad-“

“He’s AG,” Baelor reminded her. “He can’t know about this sort of thing. Damn it, Lora, what-“

 

*

 

Trystane Martell smiled, shut off the feed from the tiny camera on the top of Baelor Hightower’s desk lamp, and rang his uncle.

“The parcel has been received,” he said. “The Lannsiters’ll pay for this. Did Nym get the other one to the king?”

_“Of course she did,”_ Oberyn said, more than a hint of pride in his voice. _“That girl could get into Fort Knox if she wanted to – Buck Palace is nothing.”_

“So everything is in place,” Trys said, leaning back in his chair and grinning. “You visiting Will tonight?”

_“Tyene’s coming with me – you want a lift to see the Stark girl?”_

“Please. Here, Oberyn.”

“ _Yes, Trystane?”_

“This will work, won’t it?”

_“Nobody will be afraid of the Lannisters once the king opens that envelope Nym left for him. This’ll work, Trys. Don’t you worry about that.”_

 

*

 

The next morning, the doctors confirmed that Will was in a coma, not brain dead.

The next morning, Robert opened the envelope sealed with red wax and a hissing snake.

The next morning, the Viper and his brood (and their honorary little brother) congratulated themselves for tying the Lannisters up in so many knots that even Tywin’s skill couldn’t get them out of the web.

The next morning, Sansa Stark was able to put on a hospital gown, and she spoke to the police.

The next morning, Petyr Baelish’s name was mentioned in relation to the investigation for the first time.

 

*

 

Arya was the only one in Sansa’s room when nurses and doctors ran down the hall outside, and when she got up to ask if everything was alright, she wished she hadn’t.

Willas, apparently, was having a heart attack.


	15. Chapter Fourteen.

“He’s going to be alright,” Garlan insisted, backing up against the wall in the face of Arya’s ferocity. “He lost a lot of blood yesterday and his heart was under a lot of pressure – it wasn’t even a proper heart attack, that’s what the doctors are saying.”

“So he’ll be fine?”

“He’s no worse off than he was, anyway,” Garlan sighed, sagging suddenly. “If he’d just wake up…”

 

*

 

“His heart’s a wreck,” Loras said quietly, leaning into Renly as they stood around Will’s bed. “He… He’s apparently been in a lot more pain than he let on with his leg, and his painkillers…”

“Will’d never overdo it on his meds, though,” Ed pointed out. “Hell, painkillers like his, I wouldn’t bloody well overdo it.”

“Well, he did,” Loras insisted. “He was just trying to cope… Fucking hell.”

“So bypass surgery?”

“Yeah,” Renly agreed, rubbing his hand over Loras’ arm in comfort. “Yeah, the docs reckon a double bypass should do it, I think? He’s been mainlining all kinds of shit and a lot more whiskey and tobacco than you lot realised since he was seventeen. It’s no wonder his ticker’s under pressure.”

“Why didn’t he just admit it was this bad?” Rodge asked, hair flopping down and hiding his eyes. “He could have told us, of all people-“

“You know Will,” Ed said, sounding as old as they all were in some ways. “He can’t stand people fussing over him-“

“Unless they’re Sansa,” Loras finished. “Has anyone told Sansa how bad he is?”

“Garlan said he was talking to Arya earlier,” Ed told him. “I think he told her Will was fine, though. I’ll go talk to them-“

“Sansa can’t stand being close to you,” Renly said gently. “Maybe tell Jon, ask him to tell her?”

 

*

 

“I want to see him.”

Jon had been expecting that as soon as Ed’d asked him to tell Sansa the truth about Will’s condition – nobody had told her _anything_ aside from him being in a coma, and somehow they’d made it sound as if it were a medically induced coma to allow his skull fractures to heal rather than what it was – so he just held her hand and shook his head.

“You can’t even roll over, Sansa,” he reasoned. “Let your legs heal, at least?”

“But he _needs_ me,” she insisted, squeezing Jon’s fingers tight enough for it to hurt. “Please, Jon, ask the doctors if they’ll let me see him? Please?”

“I won’t let you see him,” Ed called from the door, two coffees and a Fanta from the caff round the corner on a tray in his hand. “Trust me, Sansa, he’s not in good shape at the moment.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?” she asked accusingly. “I think I’ve proved I’m able to handle things. Tell me the truth, Edmure, please.”

Jon could see on Ed’s face that he’d take any excuse to spend time with Sansa – he’d always been close to her and Robb – so he came in, handed Jon his coffee and poured some of the Fanta into Sansa’s cup so she could sip it through a straw.

“He had more surgery on his jaw the day before yesterday,” he said, taking the seat beside Jon so Sansa could see both of them at once. “They think the anaesthetic is what triggered the heart attack – it was a shock to his system or something. I’m not sure, I couldn’t follow the sciencey specifics, but Rodge said that it was only to be expected if what they were saying is true. He’s still on the ventilator and will be for the foreseeable future, because his lung was shredded and it’s going to take a long time to heal. He’s got more bruises and stitches than skin, but miraculously most of his ink survived – Cella reckons her and Jaqen can fix what was ruined.”

He paused, and Sansa’s fingers tightened around Jon’s, and she nodded.

Ed went on.

“His bad leg was thrashed. Completely buggered – it was… It was fucking disgusting, Sansa, I’m not going to lie. They’re still not sure if he’ll be able to keep it or not. And… And his back. Someone – Trant, we think – kicked him just right in the back and made shit of his spinal cord.”

“He’s _paralysed?!”_

“Yeah, unless there’s some medical miracle or other. He’s going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

“He’ll hate that.”

“I know.”

Sansa frowned, biting her lip.

“Do you think his uncle would give me access to Willas’ accounts so I can begin renovation work on the house when I get out of here?”

Jon almost smiled – give Sansa a goal to work towards and she could overcome anything. Winterfell, escaping the Red Army, hiding the Tyrells from the mobs of Catholics plaguing Paris, keeping her son’s dyslexia hidden from the teachers who would have refused to teach him, it didn’t matter what. It was a goal, and Sansa would do anything to achieve it.

Caring for Will was her goal now, and Jon just knew that she’d heal quicker so she could be ready to look after Will properly when (if) he woke up.

 

*

 

Two weeks passed. The police, apparently, were building their case. Sansa had the dressings on her back and bottom and thighs changed three times a day. Willas didn’t wake up.

Then the king came to visit Sansa.

“What did he want?” Bran asked, wheeling himself back into Sansa’s room as soon as Robert left, frowning and looking as if he wanted to break something (Joffrey’s neck, Bran hoped).

“To talk about Joff,” she said, wincing as she set her cup back on the nightstand. “He had… Interesting questions. Someone told him something, and he wanted to know what I thought.”

“So he knows the truth about his, ah, children?”

Sansa smiled slightly.

“He knows,” she agreed. “I worry for Tommen and Myrcella, though…”

 

*

 

It was all over the tabloids the next morning – INCEST SCANDAL ROCKS NATION.

Myrcella sneaked into the hospital with her fair hair already dyed black, and Tommen, trailing just behind her, had opted for electric blue just because he could. It didn’t really matter what they did now, not when they already knew how the DNA tests would turn out – the Vipers had made sure their father would never look at them with anything but disgust, had ruined the Lannisters as thoroughly as possible.

“How anyone doesn’t know that they’re Martells, I’ll never know,” she fumed, throwing herself into Robb’s arms to try and hide her tears. “Grandfather seems to think it’s a fucking smear campaign, and Dad- Dad- He couldn’t get us out of the place quick enough, Robb, it was- it was _horrible!”_

“He’s looking for Gendry now,” Tommen said, sounding completely resigned to the whole thing. “I told him I knew where my “big brother” was and I’d give him Dad’s number whenever I saw him. I was talking to him about twenty minutes ago when I went to see Sansa.”

“Mistake?”

“Seeing Sansa? Huge. Apparently I look a lot more like Joff than I thought, even with bright blue hair.”

Robb winced in sympathy, rubbing circles on Cella’s back.

“She seems a lot better, though,” Tommen said brightly. “Sansa, I mean – Bran was saying she might be able to sit in the next couple of days?”

“Her legs are almost completely healed,” Robb agreed. “They’re a bit worried about her, um, her bum, but they think it’ll be good enough for her to sit out for an hour or two provided she doesn’t lean back against anything.”

 

*

 

“Sorry about this morning,” Sansa said to Bran when he came in with a bag of McDonalds in his lap. “I- Tom’s just a lot like Joff, I suppose.”

“Less than I’m like Robb,” Bran said with a shrug, taking out a McFlurry and setting it beside Sansa on the bed. “And his hair is blue now.”

“I know. I just… I’m not afraid of Robb and Mum and Edmure. I don’t know why I don’t like being close to them – I _want_ to be close to them, Mum especially, but I just… I can’t, Bran. I don’t understand it at all.”

Bran swallowed a mouthful of milkshake and took a thoughtful bite of his Big Mac.

“You know,” he said, “I think I might.”

 

*

 

“The whole country is in disarray!” Baelor exploded, throwing a copy of the Sun at Mace and stomping away. “The royal family is a laughing stock! One of the oldest, strongest political families in the country is a, a, I don’t even know what to call them! One of our finest fucking soldiers is a pervert who fathered three children on his twin bloody sister!”

“I’m still Prime Minister, I still wield the power-“

“Yes, but the royal family, the most British of all symbols of Britain, is a _ruin,_ you fat bastard! There’s no legitimate heir to the throne unless we turn to Robert’s brothers, and who the fuck is going to want Stannis Baratheon as king? Imagine him doing a fucking goodwill tour with that horrible wife of his!”

Malora looked up from the Guardian, nose wrinkled in distaste and folded it back before handing it to her brother.

“Oh, fucking marvellous!” he raged. “Because Margaery isn’t all over the papers as having been brutalised by the eldest of Cersei’s three, she’s being accused of _having known about it!_ You won’t be PM for long if you can’t fucking disprove this, Mace!”

 

*

 

While all this was going on, Willas dreamed.

No, not dreamed – remembered.

He remembered Westeros, that first life that they all remembered with such clarity but that didn’t seem to have existed at all, where Sansa had come to him so late, so broken, and he’d been sure he would never be able to heal her, never even see her smile.

She’d been so beautiful that day in the sept, dressed all in silver and with a white cloak heavy around her shoulders, her hair a tumble of fire down her back. He’d replaced the white with green and gold, the direwolf with roses, and neither of them had ever mentioned that he hadn’t needed to take her maidenhead that night.

He remembered Leyton and Edwyn and Minisa and Olwyn and Daved, little Daved who came so long after the rest that he took them all by surprise. Daved had always been Sansa’s favourite, even if she refused to ever admit it.

He remembered Paris, remembered her and Robb coming to rescue his family from the Papal Guard or whoever they were, remembered her helping Robb and Jon carry him out of the house as his leg bled all over her fine silks, remembered her teaching him the Catholic prayers and the way she’d been so surprised when he’d called her beautiful and meant it.

He remembered Dresden and remembered doing everything he could to keep her safe, remembered Philadelphia and losing her, Paris again and having to convince her that it could be safe.

Willas slept and remembered, and around him, the world shifted.

 

*

 

“There’s nothing he can do to get out of this,” Baelor told the Old Man. “We have video evidence of his involvement in the attack on our Willas, and audio evidence, and there were cameras everywhere in Lannister’s place, so we have him on video beating the everliving shit out of Willas’ girl. Nobody’ll touch him with a bargepole because of what the king has said. He’s going to prison, Dad.”

The Old Man smiled a very dark smile indeed.

“Bout time people remembered to fear the Hightowers more than they fear the Lannisters,” he said. “Send him down, son. Break him if you have to, but see to it that Joffrey whatever-he-is doesn’t see the light of day except through prison bars for a _very_ long time.”


	16. Chapter Fifteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you followed the tumblr link here, ignore the final number on the last link because I miscalculated and am silly.

The New Year’s Eve edition of the Sun had, on page one, an unbelievably high quality photograph of a blonde man and woman locked in a very amorous embrace indeed. The man and woman were unmistakably the Lannister twins.

In fact, the Christmas Eve editions of _every_ newspaper, tabloid and broadsheet alike, carried high-quality photographs of the Lannister twins, except those owned by Lannister Media. Channel Four had a field day, gleefully sharing tales of the Lannisters’ exploits in explicit detail such as the BBC refused to reveal before the nine o’clock watershed.

Tywin Lannister, at one point the most powerful man in the realm because the Prime Minister and king alike feared him, was ruined. Who was going to fear a man with children like that?

Jaime was out of the country with friends, Addam Marbrand and Ilyn Payne, but Tywin ordered him home and was, as always, obeyed.

Then the reckoning began.

 

* * *

 

 

New Year’s Eve in Buckingham Palace was the worst day of Myrcella’s life so far (there had been worse days in other lives, but she’d had high hopes for this one) because it was spent sitting with Tom and Shireen and trying not to listen to her father and uncles (not really her father or uncles at all) shout at one another.

“Dad wants to name Gendry his heir,” Tom said gloomily, sitting down on the stairs and pulling his knees to his chest. “Says he won’t see anyone but his son on the throne. Problem is, Stan’s his legal heir as is and him and Renly think that it should stay that way. They say nobody’ll accept Gendry as king when the time comes.”

“They won’t,” Shireen agreed sadly, chewing absently on her lip ring. “I don’t want to be queen when the time comes, though. Nobody’ll want me as queen, will they? I could probably talk Dad into naming Renly his heir…”

“Wouldn’t do much good,” Tom sighed, running a hand through his hair – he’d gelled it so it lay semi-straight rather than flopped in a mess of curls – and grimacing when his fingers came away sticky. “People’ll never forget that Dad let himself be fooled into thinking we were his…”

Shireen scratched at the burn scars on her neck, a reminder of Stan having saved her from the cult leader her mother had gotten tied up with when she was a kid. The mad bitch – Melisandre of this life, Myrcella knew – had been trying to use “sacred oil,” in this case _boiling_ oil, to “purify” Shireen when she had mumps or measles, and Stan had walked in in the middle of the ritual. It was only thanks to him that Shireen had avoided facial scarring, because he’d knocked both Selyse and Mel aside and lifted Shireen clear and gotten her to the hospital before the scarring could cut too deep.

“Nobody’ll be able to deny I’m Dad’s, even without a DNA test,” Shireen said, the ghost of a smile playing about her lips – and it was true. Ever since she’d had her ears pinned back, she’d looked more and more like their (her) grandmother, even with her lip ring and eyebrow bar and God alone knew how many earrings and the navy-blue hair dye. Hell, that just made the colour of her very Baratheon eyes stand out even more. “And I suppose I’ll have to be Dad’s heir, because however accepting people’ve been of Renly being gay, I don’t know how they’d react to a prince or princess being carried by a surrogate…”

 

* * *

 

 

Robb raised an eyebrow when DCI Selmy laid out the charges.

“He was whipping my sister with a belt and wanking while he did it,” he said coldly. “Was I supposed to stand a safe distance away and politely ask him to lay down his weapon and refrain from his damaging actions?”

The old man frowned.

“You’re four inches and two stone bigger than him, and you know full well how strong you are,” he pointed out, and Robb knew that he had a point – years of rugby in the winters and cricket in the summers and rowing whenever he could fit it in had left him fitter than Joffrey could ever hope to be.

“If I may, Inspector,” Baelor said smoothly, leaning forward onto the table, “my client did not use excessive force against Mr- oh dear, what are we to call him? Mr. Lannister? Well, my client did not use excessive force against the former Prince of Wales, and I have three witnesses to attest to that. Four, if Miss Stark is well enough to testify when Mr. Lannister is brought to trial.”

“Mr. Hightower-“

“Unless you have proof that my client used excessive or unnecessary force in restraining Mr. Lannister and preventing him from further assaulting Miss Stark, I don’t see how any charge of aggravated assault or truly assault of any sort can logically be brought against my client. He was acting in his sister’s defence, and as Mr. Lannister sustained his injuries during his fall, there really is nothing Mr. Stark could have done.”

Inspector Selmy smiled just slightly.

“This is the stance you’re taking, Mr. Hightower?”

“Indeed it is, Barry,” Baelor said, standing up and motioning for Robb to do the same. “Uncle Gerry sends his regards, by the way – says you should consider Cornwall when you decide to step back.”

 

* * *

 

 

On New Year’s Day Sansa was allowed to sit in a well-padded wheelchair for a few hours, with a blanket over her legs.

Mum made the mistake of leaving her alone in her room with just Arya and Bran, and she managed to convince them to bring her down the hall to see Willas.

“I’ll take full blame,” she promised, turning as best she could to smile at Arya as they made their furtive way along the corridor. “Mum won’t dare give out to me at the moment, you know that.”

Will’s room was empty except for Margaery when they got there, and she almost fell over trying to get out of her chair and away from Sansa.

“Marg, wait,” she said, holding out a hand to the woman who had been her best friend for so long. “You didn’t want him any more than I did, did you?”

Margaery held tight to Sansa’s hand and shook her head, but she couldn’t seem to say anything.

“C’mon,” Arya said quietly once Marg had pressed a kiss to the top of Sansa’s head and darted away, “Mum’ll be back soon.”

She settled Sansa’s chair beside Willas’ bed, and then respectfully stood outside the door.

Sansa touched Willas’ cheek, the scruff of beard and the difference in shape that marked his broken jaw, traced her fingers up to ruffle the stubble where his hair was starting to grow back, ran a fingertip around the still slightly-swollen shape of his eye, touched his just-healed lower lip under the tube of the ventilator.

“Edmure told me you won’t be able to walk,” she whispered, slipping her hand under the arm pinned across his chest and splaying her fingers to feel the rise and fall of every breath and the steady thud of his heart to accompany the whoosh of the ventilator and the blip-blip-blip of the heart monitor. “That’s alright, though – we’ll be fine, won’t we? As soon as I get out of here, Baelor’s agreed to let me be in charge of the renovations to the house – we’ll move the kitchen and the living room and our room and a bathroom downstairs, into the basement, and we’ll widen the doorways, and if you want we can install a lift and you can still have your study on the central floor… It’ll be fine, won’t it? You and me, we’ll be fine?”

He lay unmoving save the rise and fall of his chest under her hand.

“I’m starting therapy next week,” she said. “Rodge recommended the guy he sent Theon to after… After all that trouble with Ramsay Bolton. And the doctors think that they can fix a lot of my scarring! The boys and Arya all volunteered to test as donors for skin grafts, but I hope I have enough of the right tissue so they don’t need to be involved. It’s supposed to be painful, and I don’t want them to be hurt.”

Rise and fall, rise and fall, thud-thud-thud, whoosh and huff, whoosh and huff, blip-blip-blip.

“I want you to wake up,” she said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear herself. “You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me, and I need- I need you to wake up. I can’t do this alone, Willas. Promise me you’ll wake up.”

Rise and fall. Blip-blip-blip.

“I’ll come see you again tomorrow,” she promise, wishing she could lean over and kiss his forehead, that smooth patch between the stitches and the bandages and his hairline, but she knew her own stitches and her pain threshold would never withstand the strain. “I’ll come see you every day for as long as I’m able, I promise.” She touched his face again, his lower lip, the scruff of his beard. “Please wake up,” she begged, curling her hand around his where it lay at his shoulder. “Please, Willas, please wake up, please-“

It wasn’t until Arya came in and handed her a tissue before wheeling her away silently that Sansa even realised that she was crying.

 

* * *

 

 

Little Christmas brought many joyous surprises.

The first, for Sansa, was that Robin, Robb and Edmure had chased Petyr down to his house (not the East End apartment he’d hidden her in, some other bolthole of his) and handed him over for his part in her travails, in Dad’s murder, and in Joffrey’s attempt on Willas’ life.

Joffrey, now without the safety net of royalty and with the Lannister name in the mud (the Vipers had been supplying a carefully rationed stream of filth to the papers and the police alike since that first lethal dose just before Christmas, and Sansa hadn’t been able to thank Trystane and his cousins enough for that) had been remanded in custody awaiting trial, without a chance of bail because he was seen as a legitimate threat not only to Sansa’s safety but also to Willas’, Tommen’s, Margaery’s and, surprising everyone and somehow no one at the same time, Tyrion Lannister’s.

Willas’ heart surgery was being tentatively hailed as a success, although the heavy padding of thick white bandages covering his chest meant Sansa had yet more fuel for her always-dark nightmares. The doctors were pleased with the way the rest of his injuries were healing, too, the broken bones and the fractures and all the rest.

Nobody mentioned his back if they could help it, but everything else was healing. They could deal with that when his heart was back online properly.

Sansa herself had been beyond relieved to have the stitches in her thighs removed, but she’d been devastated when the doctors had told her she didn’t have enough viable skin of the right type left to replace the skin she needed for her back.

Bran, her brave Bran, was the closest match, and he laughed when she asked if he’d be able to bear the pain – “I have so many drugs in my system I don’t even know what pain _is_ anymore, Sansa,” he said, patting her hand and then proceeding to move his knight and win the third game of chess in a row.

But she was thinking about that, and she’d started talking to Arya and Gendry about the tattoos Myrcella had designed, and…

And Stannis had been recognised as Robert’s legal heir and, in the event of his predeceasing Robert, Shireen – lovely, sweet Shireen – would take his place as Robert’s heir.

It was all working out so neatly, except Sansa couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the Lannisters wouldn’t let it go so easily as this. They never had, not in any of their previous lives – Rome had been the worst, in some ways, Rome, where Jaime had achieved cardinal before Willas and his family had managed to prove that Jaime and Cersei were having an affair, before Willas had managed to get Sansa away from them.

They’d come after them. Tyrion had been as badly shamed as any of them by Jaime and Cersei’s actions being uncovered, and he had proved himself Tywin’s son. Sansa shuddered to remember it.

No, she couldn’t see the Lannisters letting this lie. The Martells would doubtless bear the brunt of it – everyone knew that the Vipers were Martells, even if nobody could prove it and therefore Doran had been elected almost uncontested every time he ran since he’d turned twenty, and Arianne had sailed in as his running mate the year before last.

But she and Willas had been the cause of Joffrey’s ruin, as far as Cersei would be concerned. They’d pay for that if Cersei could manage it, Sansa knew, but at least the others were there to help.

Baelor had arrived the day after New Year’s Day with all sorts of forms for her to sign to give her access to Willas’ accounts, and then more forms which gave her control over the renovations of the house, and then a new phone and a list of numbers as long as her arm for builders who specialized in the kind of work she needed done.

“I can only imagine how bored you are,” he said agreeably, smiling his famous smile. “Get planning, girl, keep your mind occupied – else you’ll do nothing but worry about our Willas, and he wouldn’t want that for you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Willas was still remembering, soft-edged memories of days spent in Sansa’s company and with his friends and brothers, with the children, ruling Highgarden and managing vast estates and directing a bank and linen mills and all the other things over the years.

Mostly, though, it was Sansa, and the not-rosemary scent of her hair in his nose.

 

* * *

 

 

February came, and brought with it the first of Sansa’s skin grafts. She and Bran argued until it was agreed that they could share a room while Bran was hospitalised, and they spent their days playing chess while whoever was sitting with them – usually Jon, because everyone else had to either work or go to school or college, whereas Jon had done his duty and been invalided home without a spleen or something like that (Sansa had been a little preoccupied with Joffrey at the time) and had the money to spend his days at leisure.

Or, in this case, playing Monopoly with his hospital-bound cousins.

“How’s Willas today?” Sansa asked, moving the thimble (she always played the thimble) and landing on the power plant – they were playing on the Simpsons board today, one of Bran’s collection of nine different Monopoly boards – and handing her rent to Bran. “Loras was in last night, he said-“

“Loras is the worst pessimist I’ve ever met,” Jon soothed, swearing brilliantly when his dog landed on Burns Manor, which Sansa not only owned but had built a hotel on. “Will’s getting there, Sansa. He will get better.”

“The doctors are worried that there’s been no change in his brain activity, though,” she said, eyes tracking the movement of Bran’s hand as he reached for a Chance card. “That’s what Loras said.”

“What Loras meant was that they thought there’d be a spike or a reaction or something when they removed the cast on his arm,” Jon said easily, passing Bran his second-place prize in the beauty contest. “He will be fine, Sansa. Just… Have a little faith.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Jaime is back in Afghanistan,” Genna said, waving an airy hand. “Cersei is, despite her amusingly vehement protests, “on retreat” somewhere in Italy. Joffrey’s being held by the police, Renly Baratheon has Myrcella and Tommen… They’re all out of the public eye, Tywin. They’re all safely tucked away where they can’t harm the name any more than they already have.”

Tywin shook his head.

“Our father ruined the Lannister name, and it took me _years_ to drag it back out of the muck,” he said, voice so carefully controlled that Genna knew he was raging. “This will destroy our name if we let it run uncontrolled.”

“What can we do to control it?” Kevan asked around his cigar, not looking up from the files on his desk. “It’s been proven, Tywin – the children are Jaime’s.”

Tywin folded his hands together, knuckles cracking.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and even Kevan looked up at that.

 

* * *

 

 

Oberyn and Doran Martell clinked their glasses together and watched the play of the weak spring sunlight on the river behind the house.

“To the fall of the Lannisters,” Oberyn said quietly, and Doran smiled.

“And let us pray now that the vacuum is filled by those more worthy of the influence,” he said. “Quentyn intends to visit Princess Shireen, you know. They hit it off at Trystane’s last birthday party, I’m told.”

Oberyn grinned and sipped his brandy.

“To a Martell on the throne, then,” he laughed.

 

* * *

 

 

When the day came for Sansa to go home, she was missing from her room in the hospital.

Robb found her, compression bandages tight from hip to armpit and then wrapped over her shoulders, too, slumped with her head resting in the crook of Will’s elbow and her arm draped across his stomach.

He almost left her there, because it was the first time since she’d been found that she was sleeping without nightmares.


	17. Chapter Sixteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit fillery, maybe?

Sansa moved into Willas’ house properly, and after much arguing managed to convince Mum not to move in with her. However, she did need a lot of help, and so it was that Arya and Gendry found themselves living in Chelsea.

It was hard – every time Sansa woke up screaming from a nightmare, she hurried as quickly as the pain in her back allowed across the hall into Willas’ room, and his bed being empty only made it worse, only left it to Arya to tuck her under the covers and let her sleep on pillows that still smelled ever so slightly of Willas.

She still half-expected to see him standing over the cooker every morning when she came down for breakfast, still looked up every time the front door opened as if he might walk through, balancing his cane and his briefcase and his satchel and a bag of groceries _and_ his keys, somehow, kept wandering into his study to ask if he’d mind her doing this or picking these fittings for the new bathroom downstairs…

The renovation work was a blessing and a curse in equal measure, because it kept her busy but it also drew attention to Willas’ absence, and that contradiction left her almost as on edge as did Gendry’s absurdly quiet footsteps and his habit of startling her by coming into rooms when she had her back turned. He didn’t mean any harm by it, she knew that, but she was uncomfortable with having anyone behind her, after all that Joffrey had done while standing behind her.

The day they came to knock in the old servants’ door, under the steps that led to the main front door, to make it wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair and to start the work on the rest of the doorways, the halls, Sansa cried. Willas had bought this house for _her,_ had spent his entire adult life crafting a home for _her –_ she recognised that light fitting from Dresden, those curtains from Rome, that sculpture from St. Petersburg. Her rooms had been decorated in shades of mauve and cream in Philadelphia, and the music room… He’d done everything in his power to bring back Highgarden in the music room. She wondered if he’d be able to play the piano anymore, considering he wouldn’t be able to use the pedals.

Sansa cried on the day they came to knock in the old servants’ door, because Willas had spent so much effort on creating this home for her, and she had to break it to make it perfect for him.

 

* * *

 

“This is madness,” Edmure snarled, tossing files to the men around the table and balancing his phone between his ear and his shoulder and trying not to lose track of anything. “How in the fuck can the Lannisters be pulling any strings anymore? They’re finished, for fuck’s sake! Tits up!”

_“I overheard it, Ed, don’t get mad at me for you all underestimating Tywin,”_ Roslin snapped back, Minisa crying in the background. _“It’s not my fault your sources-“_

“I know, I know,” he growled, slamming shut the boardroom door and beckoning for Renly to follow him. “That doesn’t mean I’m not rightfully fucking pissed off, Roslin-“

_“Well don’t bloody well take it out on me,”_ she said firmly, “ _I overheard Stevron and Dad talking about files of Robb’s and that the Lannisters can make use of them-“_

“There’s nothing- what the hell could he possibly have on Robb that would be of use to the Lannisters? Is he going to try and make it look as if Robb was in on the whole Cersei-Jaime thing?”

_“Ed-“_

“Don’t,” he warned her, waving away his secretary with one hand and pouring tea for Renly with the other. “I’m going to fucking kill your father, Roslin, so help me God but I am-“

_“I’ll see what Oly has, see if he can get into Dad’s office and dig something up… I won’t let this happen again, Ed. I won’t see your family broken again.”_

Renly laid a single sheet of paper on Edmure’s desk and smiled.

Edmure said goodbye to Roslin, promised to be home for dinner, said goodbye again, and read the file.

“You’re not fucking serious.”

 

* * *

 

“We knew the Lannisters wouldn’t give up,” Trystane said, fingers flying over the keyboard of his beloved MacBook as he swung his feet up onto the edge of Will’s bed. “Now, who do we want cut off from their funds again?”

Rodge rubbed his face and sighed heavily.

“Lannister Media is being frozen because of this bloody libel case,” he said. “Genna and Tyrion are frozen anyways. Is there any way we can cut Cersei off? Talk is she’s been trying to buy her way out of wherever it is Tywin sent her in Italy.”

Trystane hummed under his breath, something that sounded like _Fly Me To The Moon_ but could have been Skrillex, knowing him, and tapped away at his keyboard.

“Is there any way,” he laughed, shaking his head. “Remember who you’re talking to, Greyjoy. The Krakens may be feared for your brutality, but there’s nothing the Vipers don’t know about subtlety.”

Rodge scowled.

“I’m not a Kraken,” he said sharply. 

Trystane waved that away with a smile.

“The point still stands,” he said, eyes flicking back and forth over his screen. “Your family beat people to death and sink their remains to hide them. Mine find every last morsel of information on people and use that to ruin them. Different tactics, often the same end result, unfortunately.” He hit enter with a flourish and turned his laptop around for Rodge to see.

“Cersei Lannister is now completely cut off from all bank accounts, and if she tries internet banking she’ll get a nice virus that will infect all her accounts on everything linked to this account.”

Rodge cracked the smallest of smiles, which was high praise indeed coming from him.

“Even iTunes?”

Trystane grinned.

“ _Especially_ iTunes.”

 

* * *

 

Tommen handed Myrcella a thick manila envelope just as she dashed for the door.

“What is this?” she asked, slowing but not stopping.

“Give it to Robb,” he said. “It’ll fix this mess Granddad tried to start – or at least, it _should.”_

This mess, of course, being the slanderous accusations of Robb having been part of the conspiracy to keep the truth of Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen’s parentage a secret, of his father having known, of any sort of blatant lie the papers owned by Lannister Media could cook up and paint as even vaguely plausible, so long as it had the potential to damage the Starks.

The biggest one hadn’t yet been published, of course, the truth about the fire that had killed the Targaryens, the truth that had been hushed up for Jon and Daenerys’ sake, that was still to come.

Myrcella tucked the envelope into her bag and ran out the door – she was due to meet Robin for lunch, mostly because she couldn’t meet Robb in public at the moment for fear of further jeopardising his profile – the by-election had been put on hold _again_ because of the drama with the royal family, and with voting just a week away…

“I’ll see that he gets it!” she called back over her shoulder, knowing that Robin would be visiting Sansa who would give it to Bran who would give it to Robb. She just wished she could give it to him herself.

 

* * *

 

Doran frowned over his glasses at Edmure Tully, and then he closed the file on his desk.

“You think Genna Lannister is going to publish this?”

“I do.”

“And why come to me?”

“Because I couldn’t get a hold of Trystane and we need the Vipers’ help.”

Doran smiled just slightly.

“I am not associated-“

“We both know that’s not true, your highness,” Edmure said tiredly, running a hand through his hair. “Now please, you’re the only ones who can do anything about this.”

Doran nodded.

“Very well, Lord Tully,” he said. “Very well.”

 

* * *

 

Those newspapers owned by Lannister Media, on the morning of the by-election, ran with the harrowing tale of Brandon and Rickard Stark attacking and killing the Targaryens in vengeance for Rhaegar making off with Lyanna and destroying her chances of becoming queen.

The rest of the newspapers told a very different story. The Times, for example, had a four-page spread on how the _Lannisters_ started the fire that killed Aerys Targaryen, his wife, daughter-in-law, younger son and eldest grandchildren, as well as Rickard and Brandon Stark.

The war had well and truly reached fever pitch.

 

* * *

 

Sansa was oblivious to this, seeing her dermatologist as she was.

“You’re doing well,” Dr Pylos said brightly, signing off on her prescription with a smile. Sansa knew he was good – he’d been Shireen Baratheon’s doctor for years, and her scars weren’t half as noticeable as she seemed to think they were – but that didn’t mean she wasn’t apprehensive about her treatment as a whole. “You’re healing well, and the seam shouldn’t be _too_ obvious. A success, I think.”

She took the scrip, smiled and thanked him, and then left.

Instead of leaving the hospital, she made her way down the hall, fidgeted at her hair in the mirrored lift, and then went to sit with Willas.

She was still there when his parents arrived at eight o’clock that night, just sitting at his bedside, holding his hand.


	18. Chapter Seventeen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it caused some confusion in the last chapter, Edmure called Doran “your highness” as a kick up the arse because HEY LOOK WE ALL KNOW THE TRUTH TOO NOW GO TO IT or something. Doran is not prince of anything, Edmure is not lord of anything.   
> Have at it, intrepid explorers

Summer rolled around with the war between Lannister Media and the Viper-fuelled media still raging, Sansa and Bran still visiting Dr. Pylos to have the skin grafts and donor site checked regularly, Jon and Dany rebuilding the empire that had come under the Targaryen Enterprises umbrella before the fire, Robb and his allies in the Commons trying to counteract everything Tywin Lannister and _his_ allies did…

And Joffrey’s trial.

By rights, it should have been a formality – Sansa’s injuries alone would have been case for attempted murder, even without the assaults of varying degrees on Margaery, Tommen and Tyrion, the conspiracy to commit murder on Willas, the rape and other sexual assault charges from Sansa and Margaery, and the dozens of other assault cases that were coming out of the woodwork – but the media attention made certain that things were complicated by the constant presence of dozens of reporters outside the courthouse.

Sansa had never been quite so grateful to her family and Willas’ – Jon and Mum and Arya stayed with her all of the time, and Daenerys came as often as she could (Val stayed away because Jon was afraid someone might hit into her and hurt the baby, with her being so close to due), and between Baelor, Malora and Garlan, she was never going to need a bodyguard (she had _never_ met anyone who could be as pointedly terrifying as Malora Hightower, particularly when Malora was wearing all black).

The Vipers were doing their job with aplomb, keeping the papers and the rest of the media well informed of the details Lannister Media would have tried to smother, but even they quailed at reporting Sansa’s and Margaery’s testimonies – Sansa’s in particular, because Joff had apparently not been quite as vicious with Marg – in any great detail. Sansa didn’t really mind that, because she already had enough sympathy coming from all sides because of what _was_ reported, and she’d seen enough of the _what a brave girl_ looks to already be sick of them.

What Sansa wanted was for Joff to be sent to prison and the trial to be over so she could go back to making sure the renovations were being done properly and sitting with Willas. That was what Sansa wanted.

What she got were long, protracted sessions on the stand with Tywin and Kevan Lannister doing their damndest to make it look as if she’d _asked_ for Joffrey to do what he’d done. Of course, Baelor and Malora demolished that in short order, but it still turned her stomach to think that the Lannisters believed anyone could _believe_ that she’d wanted Joffrey to- to-

Margaery’s testimony was, in typical Marg fashion, expertly tailored to garner the maximum reaction from the jury. Sansa had simply climbed up there and done her best not to fall apart completely as she took everyone through the hell that was her relationship with Joffrey, but Margaery had choreographed her time on the stand right down to the last sniffle. She was a marvel, she really was, and Sansa wished Willas was there to share her not-quite-amusement at his sister’s theatrics.

Margaery squeezed her hand when she retook her seat, a firm press of fingers, and she winked just slightly in a way that was so entirely Willas that it almost brought tears to Sansa’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t say a word to Sansa,” Robb warned. “She has enough on her plate without getting her hopes up over what’s probably nothing-“

“But the doctors think this is _something,”_ Loras protested, hands white-knuckled on the railing around Will’s bed. “A spike like that in his brain activity-“

“Could be nothing,” Ed said, clearly reluctant to admit it. “Robb’s right, Loras – unless we know for sure that he’s waking up, we shouldn’t say anything to Sansa.”

“Well, I’ll be telling Mum and Dad and Garlan and Marg,” Loras pointed out. “Odds are some of them will mention it where Sansa can hear. I’m not hiding something like this from my family, and I include Sansa in that because she’s Will’s whatever-they-are-“

“I’m his fiancée,” Sansa said from the door, and they all jumped in surprise because they hadn’t heard her coming. “We’ll be getting married as soon as he’s fit for it, whether he knows it or not. Did you say that there’s been a spike in his brain activity, Loras?”

“Second one this month,” Loras said eagerly, smiling encouragingly when Sansa pushed past Robb and Ed and Renly to stand beside the bed, holding Will’s hand and curling her fingers around his now-healed jaw. “It’s a good sign, Sansa-“

“But I shouldn’t get my hopes up,” she said dryly, glancing back over her shoulder at Robb. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

“Surely they’ve run out of ammunition by now,” Ned said exasperatedly, throwing himself down onto Trys’ bed with a sigh. “You’ve barely left your room for months!”

“Yes I have,” Trystane said dismissively, not looking away from his computer screen. “I go to the loo. I answer the door when my food arrives. I shower.”

“Not often enough,” Ned said, quite firmly. “Trys, you’re not the only one who can do this.”

“I’m the best, though,” Trys said, adding another couple of lines of code and frowning before deleting seventeen lines and beginning to replace them. “By far the best. I can break the Lannisters, Ned, I can, I can make it safe for everyone-“

“By what, throwing accusations at them? Trys, you need to get a proper night’s sleep, eat a proper dinner, _shower-“_

“I shower!”

“The Lannisters’ll keep for a couple of hours,” Ned said, pulling Trys’ swivel chair away from his desk, with Trys on it, and wheeling him out of the room. “Food, shower, sleep. Possibly sex before sleep, if you remember how sex works.”

 

* * *

 

“Dad, please-“

“I’m not your dad,” Robert said, and Myrcella knew it hurt him to say it. “Just go, girl – just leave.”

“Dad-“

“Myrcella, leave,” he ordered. “Please. Just leave.”

“I- No! This is my home! You’re my _dad,_ no matter what that stupid DNA test says – I don’t want to claim the throne or any of that, I just want my _dad!”_

“Then go call Jaime!” Robert said, fists clenched at his sides. Myrcella shrugged off Tommen’s hand and stepped forward, closer to Robert. “Go on, get out! I don’t want you here!”

“You _are_ my dad,” Myrcella insisted. “I don’t care what anyone says, you will _always_ be my dad, and no fuckery on Mum’s part can change that.”

“You watch your language,” Robert snapped without thinking, and then his face fell. “I can’t be your dad, Celly – don’t you understand? I _can’t.”_

“Why not?” she demanded, standing right up against his belly. “Why _not,_ Dad? It’s not like I’m trying to get you to name me your heir, I just want my dad back! Why can’t I-“

“Just go,” Robert said. “You and your brothers are no children of mine, Myrcella, and you never were. You never will be.”

For the first time since her true parentage had become public knowledge, Myrcella felt like crying.

“Dad-“

“I am not your dad, Myrcella. Get out.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, deeper into the palace, and if Tywin hadn’t taken her by the shoulders and guided her out, Myrcella would have stood there and cried until the staff removed her. As it was, she let her grandfather lead her out to his car and didn’t do much aside from stare blankly out the window as they sped across London.

“He _is_ my dad,” she said quietly as Tywin led her and Tommen into his apartment. “He will _always_ be my dad.”

Her grandfather said nothing. She knew that he was as thoroughly disgusted as everyone else by her and Tommen and Joff, but they were Lannisters, so he’d protect them.

 

* * *

 

Sansa woke with a start when Jon touched her shoulder, bolting upright but not releasing Will’s hand.

“Willas…” she breathed, blinking blearily at Will’s still-sleeping form and then frowning up at Jon. “Oh. Just you.”

“Thanks for that,” Jon teased, dropping down onto his hunkers to look at her properly. “Sansa, you should come get some sleep.”

“No,” she disagreed, almost all of her attention already back on Will. “The doctors said-“

“That he _might_ wake up within the next week or two,” Jon said gently. “ _Your_ doctors said your immune system is crap enough at the moment without you making it harder by not looking after yourself, didn’t they?”

“It’s suppressed, not crap,” she corrected him. “I can’t _leave,_ Jon – what if he wakes up? I have to be here-“

“You’ve got a big day tomorrow,” Jon reminded her, taking her free hand. “Sansa, you need to be at court tomorrow, you know that.”

“I know,” she sighed, letting him help her to her feet and wincing as she tugged on the tenderness of her back. “I know that, Jon – but what if he _does_ wake up, and I’m not here? I need to be here, Jon!”

“You will be,” Jon assured her, waiting just long enough for her to bend over and kiss Will’s lips before guiding her out of the room. “Come on, Val’s cooking – we need to get back if we want to get there before she burns down the whole building.”

“Oh, but Jon-“

“You’re not sitting alone in that big house,” he said sternly, nudging her gently into the lift. “Not on your life, Sansa – everyone is coming over to ours for dinner, and everyone includes you. So. You know. You’re coming.”

 

* * *

 

The courtroom was completely silent the following morning as everyone waited on the judge to arrive.

Sansa sat straight-backed, her hands clasped tightly on the table top, and stared straight ahead. She knew what the jury would say. They had to say it. There was no way they could say anything else.

Baelor slipped into his seat beside her, smelling of pipe smoke and looking harried, his wig very slightly askew. Malora straightened it as if by reflex and went back to chewing nicotine gum. She was always chewing nicotine gum.

“Not much longer now, girl,” he said brightly, flashing her a smile (she could remember a time when his smile was his name, how she’d been startled by how accurate a nickname it was when Willas’ favourite uncle danced her around the banquet hall in Highgarden on her wedding day, green velvet and cloth-of-gold heavy around her shoulders) and patting her hands. “All be over soon.”

She hoped he was right. Against her better judgement, she glanced across the room to where Joffrey sat with his grandfather and granduncle. He was utterly composed, elegant as always in his black suit and dark red shirt, gold signet (a Lannister signet, he never acted a Baratheon) shining on his right ring finger.

He saw her looking, raised an eyebrow and smirked, and he laughed when she turned away sharply, shattering the tense silence in the courtroom.

The judge entered, they rose, they sat, and they waited.

 

* * *

 

“Relief, I think,” Baelor said easily, hands in his pockets as he rocked up onto the balls of his feet. “Shock, too, but mostly relief. Nothing’d do her but come and see the lad.”

They – Baelor, Malora, Robb, Jon, Edmure and Mum – were all standing in the door of Will’s room, watching uncomfortably as Sansa, sprawled across his chest, sobbed big messy tears all over the place.

“Should we…?” Robb suggested, motioning that maybe they should leave. “I mean, she probably wants privacy, right?”

“She’ll be fine,” Malora said, waving an airy hand and smiling. “Baelor’s right, happens all the time in these sort of cases. Right as rain, once she has a good cry.”

 

* * *

 

“He’s going to prison.”

“Eighteen years. Something about evidence for a lot of stuff going missing, I think – the Lannisters own half the Met and two thirds of the KCs, we should be thankful he got that long.”

“Still, after everything he put Sansa through,” Val sighed, rubbing her bump and sipping her tea (raspberry). “Surely he deserved more?”

Jon shrugged, scratching at his dragon, and then shrugged again.

“It’s better than nothing,” he said at last. “And Sansa… I’ve never seen anyone look so relieved, Val. The only thing that could make her week better would be Will waking up.”

 

* * *

 

And in the hospital, Loras dropped his coffee and sprinted for Will’s room as Sansa’s scream echoed down the corridor, Renly hot on his heels.

“What is it?” he demanded as soon as he was through the door, taking in the tears on Sansa’s cheeks and the way she was pointing at Will’s hand where it lay on top of the covers.

“He moved,” she said tremulously, a smile of such brilliant happiness breaking out on her face that Loras smiled despite himself. “Loras, his hand _moved!”_


	19. Chapter Eighteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's this chapter, the next chapter, and the epilogue. Nearly there, chaps!

Every single one of Willas’ doctors was hysterically optimistic about everything, and Sansa did her best to not join in just in case…

But it was impossible.

Because there were all sorts of ridiculously upbeat things being said, and he’d _moved,_ he’d squeezed her hand and huffed a sigh and she needed him so much to wake up, because she just…

“Any day now, love,” she said bracingly, sitting down in what had quickly become her chair at his bedside, taking out her sewing so she could have the new quilt for their bed ready for when he came home. “Any day now you’ll wake up and… And you can come home. Soon. You’ll be awake and we can be us, can’t we?”

She sighed, smoothed down his hair – grown back now, heavy curls just a few shades darker than the beard his mother ordered Garlan and Loras to keep trimmed neat to his jaw as he liked – and traced down the shape of his nose, the bump from the worst break and the faint sharpness from the smaller break before taking his hand.

“The frame thingy, your lift for the bathroom, it came yesterday afternoon,” she added brightly. “And we’re just waiting on those weird rubber tiles for the front door, and the landscapers finished in the garden last week, you’ll be able to get out and about so you’re not cooped up in the house all of the time.”

His fingers spasmed around hers, and her heart nearly stopped.

“Your lift – the big one to get you upstairs – it’s brilliant. Arya had Gendry do something to it so it’s quicker, and it’s just… It’s great. And you won’t recognise the basement, oh, wait till you see it!”

His fingers tightened again.

“We have a big bathroom – it’s huge, we knocked the cloakroom and the scullery and part of the back kitchen in together, and then you’ll love our bedroom, it’s beside the bathroom so it’s the rest of the back kitchen and the butler’s pantry. It’s got those big windows that look out over the kitchen garden, and, and we moved the kitchen so it’s around the front to catch the sunset, and then the rest of the lower floor is just a big open sitting room, and we- oh, I found a new bedframe just like the one we had in Paris, do you remember, the stained oak with the high headboard?”

She scooted closer to the bed, not daring to hope that the movement of his fingers was real and she wasn’t just imagining it.

“And you’ll love this,” she said, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles, “I found a place that makes custom crystalware, I can get those tumblers like you had in Philadelphia, the ones with the Tyrell rose cut into them.”

His mouth moved – barely, but it did, oh God, oh God he was waking up! – and she pounded on the call button, needing a nurse to be sure she wasn’t imagining this.

“I think I can get a wheelchair retro-fitted it you’d like,” she said, “walnut panels and a compartment to hide your pipe, oh, please wake up, love, please wake up-“

A nurse came in, followed closely by Willas’ neurologist, and Sansa hadn’t even realised she was crying until the nurse took her by the shoulders and guided her away from the bed to make room for the ever-increasing fleet of doctors pouring into the room.

“He was moving,” she insisted, “he was, I swear, he was holding my hand and his mouth moved, I saw it, he _moved!”_

“I know, sweetheart, but you’re going to have to step back and let the doctors check him out,” the nurse said quietly, gently, pulling Sansa further back from the bed, further away from Willas.

“I need- I need to be with him, I need to stay with him, he’ll want me there if he wakes up-“

“I know that, sweetheart, but you really can’t afford to be in the doctors’ way-“

“Please,” she begged, “please, let me stay with him, please-“

“Sansa,” came the croaky call, slurred and hoarse and gods, he was _awake-_

“I’m here, Willas,” she called, “I’m here, love, I’m right here-“

She pushed through the doctors, shoved them aside and took Willas’ hand just as his left eye cracked open, dark green showing under the fringe of dark lashes.

“I’m here,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks as she started to laugh. “Come on, love, come on, wake up some more, come on, you can do this.”

“Sansa,” he said again, head rolling towards her, slack-jawed and dozy-eyed, and oh, oh he _smiled._

“m’live,” he slurred out, and then his eyes shut again but it didn’t matter, he’d woken up, he was better, or at least getting better-

“Oh, thank God,” she gulped out, covering her mouth with one hand and holding onto his fingers with the other as she began to sob. “Oh, thank God, thank God, he’s woken up, oh, thank God, I have to, I have to call his parents, and Baelor and Malora, and I have to-“

“You come with me and calm down,” the nurse said, helping Sansa up from where she’d fallen on her knees, “and we’ll get in touch with his next of kin-“

“I’m his fiancée,” Sansa gasped, letting the nurse pull her out of the room. “I’m his next of kin, we changed it so I’m his next of kin, I have to call everyone and tell them he woke up, please let me call them, please-“

“Sansa! Sansa, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Loras!” she cried, breaking out of the nurse’s hold and running down the hall to Loras and Renly and Rodge and Ed and Roslin. “He woke up! He woke up and he said my name, he said my name, Loras, and then he smiled and he’s asleep now but he _woke up!”_

Loras was the only one who’d never doubted that Willas would wake up, the only one who’d been as faithful as her, who’d believed as steadfastly as she had.

“He’s going to be fine,” she sobbed, “he’s alive and he said my name and he _smiled at me!”_

 

* * *

 

“Sansa.”

Garlan looked up, but it was Renly who pushed Will’s hair back from the eyes he was struggling to open, Ed who took his hand, Rodge who stood at the end of the bed and fretted like a mother hen.

“Where… Where’s Sansa?” Will asked, voice thick and low and hoarse. “Where’s Sansa?”

“She’s safe,” Renly promised. “She’s getting better, Will, lots better – she’s downstairs getting something to eat. She’ll be back soon, mate.”

“How long…?”

“Six months, bit less,” Ed assured him. “Not long at all. Sansa’s getting lots better, like Renly said, and everything’s settling legally.”

“What’s wrong with me?” he asked, exhausted by the effort, eyes sliding back closed again. “So sore. So _tired.”_

“Just you rest, mate,” Rodge said gently. “Sleep. We’ll all be right here when you wake up, we promise.”

 

* * *

 

By the end of the week, Willas was able to stay awake for more than half a minute.

He still hadn’t been told about his legs.

“Sick of lying down,” he groused when it was just him and Garlan, Sansa on the phone to Mum outside. “Lying down for six bloody months so I have, want to sit up-“

And before Garlan could get up to help him, Willas was pushing himself up on shaky arms, wincing at the strain on his chest, and then-

“Why aren’t my legs moving?” he asked, an edge of panic tinging his voice. “Garlan, why can’t I move my legs? What’s wrong with my legs, Garlan, why aren’t they moving, why can’t I move my legs-“

Sansa dropped her bag on the floor by the door and dashed in, settling beside him on the bed when he turned to her, his eyes wide with terror and horror and such terrible sadness that her heart broke for him.

“Come here,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, and he buried himself against her, his face against her breasts and his arms around her, clutching at her desperately as he gasped for breath. “Come now, come on, this isn’t the end of the world, is it? And we’ll look everywhere for help, you see if we don’t, and the house is all ready for you for the time being, come on, calm down, you’re not up for this sort of strain, Willas, come on now.”

“My legs,” he sobbed, “why my legs, why can’t I move them, Sansa, why can’t I?”

“Your back is broken, love,” she said softly, stroking his hair. “But we’ll get through this, you and me. We’ll get through this, I promise.”

 

* * *

 

It took another two weeks for Will to recover enough for proper conversations, but he was quiet and taciturn even by his standards, brooding over his legs and what he saw as his failure to protect Sansa from Joffrey.

“What use am I to her now?” he said at last, three weeks after he’d woken up, as he and Renly and Rodge played Cluedo. “I’m a wreck – no legs, no function below the waist. I can’t give her kids, and even if I could I wouldn’t be any use to her, I just-“

“Sansa loves you, Will,” Rodge said firmly. “As much as you love her, I think. She’s known about your back for as we have, and she’s still here – she only left you this past six months for court and showers.”

Will frowned at the board (he was playing Reverend Green, as always, Renly Colonel Mustard and Rodge Professor Plum) and then sighed.

“A fucking wheelchair,” he said. “I’ve had a straight leg, half a leg, no leg at all, but I’ve always been able to stand up, even if it was only on one foot. I just… It’s a lot to get used to, I suppose. And Sansa has enough to worry about without having to deal with me being… This.”

He gestured helplessly to his legs.

“It’s not fair to her,” he said quietly. “She deserves…”

“She wants _you_ though,” Renly pointed out, pulling his legs up to fold together. How he managed to balance on the chair escaped Rodge’s understanding. “You know that as well as any of us.”

“How am I supposed to do… Anything at all, though?”

“You be you,” Rodge suggested. “It’s always been more than enough in the past.”

“I had legs before,” Will pointed out. “And working reproductive organs.”

“You are not allowed to mention your dick,” Renly said, clapping his hands over his ears. “Unless it is to agree with the doctors that you can’t know what that state of affairs is with regards to your dick and how buoyant it is.”

“Never refer to anyone’s dick as buoyant ever again,” Rodge said firmly. “Ever.”

“You know what I mean,” Renly said brightly. “Little Willas might be up and running, you’re just running on empty at the moment and that’s bound to negatively impact. Besides, isn’t… Buoyancy all about hormones and things?”

“Renly, that’s basic biology-“

“Physicist,” Renly chimed out. “Never did biology. But I’m right, aren’t I? It’s all about hormones and blood vessels and things. Bound to be some sort of reaction once you get Sansa however it is your kink directs her-“

“Don’t talk about Sansa like that,” Will snapped sharply, and then he sighed again. “I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Understandable,” Renly said, as blindly cheerful as always. “Consider it, though – all is not lost, mate. Talk to a doctor – bound to be a dick specialist round here somewhere. They’ll find some way of sorting you out, don’t worry.”

“Sansa mentioned a doctor in Switzerland,” Will said. “A health resort or something, and they’ve fixed injuries like mine before. She… ah, she took pictures of my charts and emailed them to the doctors there, apparently.”

“She never said anything about this!” Rodge exclaimed.

Will blushed.

“I had a bad turn last night,” he admitted. “She’s the only one who understands why I don’t want to be sedated-“

“Will, your heart-“

“I know,” he said. “I know, but… I was asleep for six months. I don’t. I don’t want to sleep anymore. But anyways,” he rushed on, embarrassed by the concern on both his friends’ faces, “she knew that talking about getting better would help calm me down, so she started telling me about this clinic or whatever it is in Switzerland. Hotel Hoff something or other – it’s expensive, but I can afford it, what with my trust and all, and Sansa’s talking about using some of her settlement to help with the costs…”

“They think they can fix your back?”

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “We won’t know until we go over there.”

 

* * *

 

“I have an engagement ring for you,” he said, nuzzling into the side of her neck – just for the affection, nothing more – and sighing sleepily. “It’s in the safe in my room, behind the Lowry. The combination is-“

“Edwyn’s birthday?” she guessed, rubbing her cheek against his hair. “Would you like me to wear it?”

“If you’d like to,” he said, sounding absurdly shy. “I mean, I never had a chance to actually propose to you-“

“I’ll wear it,” she promised. “I’ll get it out as soon as I get back to the house tonight.”

“You should stay home and get some sleep,” he said, breathing deep against her skin. “You’ve been here every night since I woke up, Loras told me – you need to rest, love.”

“I’m fine,” she said stubbornly, reaching over to twist their hands together. “Seriously, I’m fine.”

“My fierce little wolf,” he teased, turning just enough to kiss her collarbone. “You should get some proper rest, though – I’ll be fine here, Sansa, you know I’ll be safe here. And,” he added, “I’ll know you’re safe because Arya and Gendry are with you.”

“Are you certain?”

“Loras and Garlan are coming over this evening,” he assured her. “I’ll be fine, love. And besides, I have an appointment with my neurologist in the morning at some absurdly early hour, so I should probably sleep tonight. I won’t if you’re here – we’ll be too busy planning for Switzerland.”

“I haven’t actually made the booking yet,” she reminded him. “We said we’d wait and see what your doctors here say, remember?”

“I know, but even if we don’t go to the hospital there, Zurich is a very lovely city. I think you’ll like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hotel Hoff Weissbad is a real place in Switzerland (I used it in a different fic before, so my research is reasonably solid).


	20. Chapter Nineteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! Just the epilogue to come, with proper thank yous etc :)

The doctors didn’t clear Willas to go home until the middle of September, because his legs weren’t as entirely dead as they’d thought – they’d corrected some of what had been damaged, enough to give him sensation but no function, and he wasn’t sure if that was any better.

Bran was the only one who seemed to understand, if only because he was in near the same position himself.

“Hereditary spastic paraplegia,” Bran said as they wheeled towards the cars together. “I probably could manage with a couple of canes, but it’s just easier to use the chair – you’ll get used to it. I tried out all the doors at yours to be sure they’re wide enough to actually take a chair, and they’re better than my physiotherapist’s.”

“Does your arse numb to the discomfort of being strapped into a chair in the exact same position all of the time, by any chance?” Willas asked, heaving himself up straighter and wincing – his chest was still tender – while they waited on Sansa and the others. “I mean, it’s bloody uncomfortable.”

Bran laughed, flicking on his own brakes and shaking his head.

“Give it a couple of weeks,” he promised. “Watch out for sores, though – like bedsores, but more painful because of where they are.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“There’s bound to be a saint of sore backsides, surely? Someone we can pray to for relief –.”

“Ssh,” Willas laughed, “your mother is coming!”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, love,” he said softly when Sansa pushed open the door and stepped back to let him in ahead of her. “Oh, Sansa. This is…”

It should have been impossible that a basement should have felt so open, so airy, but as soon as he rounded the corner into the sitting room he could hardly believe that he wasn’t upstairs.

“Do you like it?” she asked quietly, coming to stand beside him with her hand on his shoulder. He lifted his own hand to hers, holding her close, and then smiled up at her.

“Whatever have I done to deserve you, I wonder?” he asked, pulling her hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. “Oh, love, it’s perfect. It’s just like the parlour in Dresden, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, leaning down and kissing his hair. “Come see the rest of it.”

The lift was incongruously modern in the antique-feeling house, Willas thought, but that thought disappeared when Sansa led him into their bedroom.

“Paris,” he breathed, because even the damask padding on the high headboard was identical to what had been in their bedroom in Paris, even the stained glass panel in the centre of the high window, even the soft waft of honeysuckle that came from, he guessed, scented candles. “Oh, Sansa, how did you manage this?”

“It wasn’t as hard as you might think,” she said with a smile, sitting on the edge of the bed and slipping off her shoes. “Your accounts were… More than enough to cover all the renovation work, and I used some of my settlement to find the furnishings I wanted.”

She looked around the room with a smile, a different smile, and sighed.

“I’m relieved that we don’t actually need the hoist for you,” she admitted. “Both for your sake and because it was hideously ugly.”

 

* * *

 

“Hello?”

Robb set down his knife and fork when Myrcella went absolutely rigid, her mouth hanging open.

“Are you- are you sure?”

She was nodding now, nodding and pressing a hand over her mouth.

“I’ll be there,” she said, still nodding. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

She hung up, turned to him with a watery smile, and bit her lip.

“Dad wants to see me,” she said breathlessly, and then she laughed and darted into her room. “Dad wants to see me, Robb!” she shouted as she ran for the door.

Robb sat awkwardly in Loras and Renly’s kitchen for a minute before leaving himself, and he was barely sitting into his car when Jon called him to ask if he could babysit because he and Val had been asked to go to some last-minute charity thing in Dany’s place.

He sighed, hoped that Cella wasn’t getting her hopes up over nothing, and headed for Jon and Val’s – Aemon’d probably just sleep the entire time he was there, after all. It’d be fine.

 

* * *

 

“I booked you in,” Sansa whispered just as Willas lingered on the border of sleep. “For Switzerland. Do you still want to go?”

“Mm,” he sighed sleepily. “Get me on my feet again. Brilliant.”

She laughed and pressed closer against his side, her arm warm across his chest.

“Get some sleep,” she said, kissing the scar left from his bypass. It was still shiny and red and angry looking, even nine months after the surgery, but it was healed and that was the main thing. “We can talk in the morning.”

“Y’be here?”

“Of course I will,” she promised him, shifting slightly and nuzzling against his shoulder. “Good night, Willas.”

“Night, love.”

 

* * *

 

“I have contacts in the prison if you want him to have an accident,” Rodge offered, sipping his tea and smiling over the rim of his cup. “Any kind of accident at all. They’re very creative contacts.”

“That’s up to Sansa,” Will said firmly. “Joffrey is her ghost, not mine.”

“He’s kind of yours,” Renly pointed out, tapping his boot off the wheel of Willas’ chair as he passed. “You have to admit that, mate.”

“Kind of,” Will amended, rolling his eyes. “But mostly Sansa’s.”

“Well, would Sansa like for Rodge’s shady contacts to organise an accident for the little shit?” Ed asked, coming out of the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches. “It could be done while you’re in Switzerland.”

“That’s a big window,” Will laughed. “Especially considering I’m due to stay in the hospital for six weeks, and then we’re going to Provence for six weeks to give us both a chance to recuperate.”

“And to check your buoyancy,” Renly teased, ducking when Rodge threw a custard cream at his head. “You will be back for Christmas, won’t you?”

“Mum and Dad have offered to host not just Sansa and I but everyone related to either of us even distantly at Highgarden for the festive season,” Will said grimly. “It’ll be carnage – Dad and Pop vying for head of the family, Mum and Nan fighting constantly. Robin and his mother have been invited, and he has to try and convince his mother that we’re not going to poison him or deliberately trigger a seizure.”

Ed grimaced, looking down into his tea.

“Let me and Cat look after Lysa,” he said. “We know you’d never hurt Robin, Will.”

“It’s still going to be a shitstorm,” Renly said, wincing theatrically. “Jealous of you, mate,” he said to Rodge. “Even your fruitbowl of a family won’t be as bad as this nonsense.”

“Wait, you’re the king’s brother and you’re not doing the royal Christmas?” Rodge asked incredulously. “You toad, Renly. You absolute bastard.”

Renly grinned, completely unashamed.

“Have to keep Cella and Tom away from all sides,” he said with a shrug. “Robert is being weird, though, I’m just hoping he doesn’t fuck up his address on Christmas day.”

“You and Stan have months to convince him otherwise,” Will said, sipping his tea to hide his grin. “It’ll be fine, Renly, you know it will. Even Robert isn’t stupid enough to stuff up something so public and important as that.”

“You’d think that,” Renly said with a roll of his eyes, “but you don’t know my brother.”

 

* * *

 

“He can’t be seen to deal with me publicly just yet,” Myrcella said, eyes still red from all the tears of shock and delight she’d cried the night before, “but Dad had to admit he couldn’t just cut me and Tommen out of his life like he tried to in January. He wants to – he wants to put things right!”

Robb held her close as she laughed and half-cried some more, and if Jon looked as sceptical as he felt while he fed Aemon stewed apple, well, Robb wasn’t going to say it where Cella might overhear.

 

* * *

 

On the fifth of October, an enormous crowd gathered to see Sansa and Willas off.

“Who knows?” Willas said with a smile as his mother released him. “I might even be able to stand up when next you see me!”

“You’ll be playing cricket again by your birthday,” Renly agreed, kissing Sansa’s cheek and winking to Willas. “You’ll have to take back your record, mate – our Tommen’s after beating it.”

“I will, don’t worry,” Willas laughed, looking up at the screen above their heads. “We’d better go – have to get on ahead of everyone else and all.”

Rodge squeezed his shoulder.

“Good luck, Willas,” he said firmly, and everyone else murmured agreements.

Sansa’s hand was warm and gentle on his other shoulder.

“Come on,” she said. “We have a plane to catch.”


	21. Epilogue.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FINALE *cries*

August is warm even this far north, and for that Sansa is thankful - the lace of her dress is pretty, but it wouldn't be much use against cold weather.

"You look lovely, Sansa," Robb says earnestly, tucking a loose curl of hair behind her ear and smiling. "Will won't know what hit him."

Arya and Val and Marg are all in deep, rich purple, shoulders bare but tattoos hidden, hair decorated with tiny sprigs of baby's breath and lavender-pale rose buds.

"Come on, then," she says breathlessly, stroking Aemon's dark hair and nudging him on ahead of her. "Let's get on with it."

 

* * *

 

Garlan and Loras and Rodge are prepared the moment the bridal march starts, pulling Will's crutches out from under the pew and getting him to his feet before Sansa's even halfway up the aisle. His knuckles are white on the grips, and he'd never manage this without his crutches, but he promised himself that he'd stand to say his vows and he'll be damned if he reneges on that promise.

"I'll fall over if I turn to see her," he whispers to Garlan. "Does she look happy?"

"More than that," Garlan whispers back, sounding surprised. "She looks beautiful, Will."

And when she arrives at his side, he can't breathe because "beautiful" is the most greivous understatement he thinks he's ever heard, the most absurd attempt to quantify just how exquisitely perfectly lovely Sansa looks, how exquisitely perfectly lovely she  _is,_ and he is so stunned that this gorgeous creature has agreed to be his wife that he hardly pays attention to anything but the happiness on Sansa's face until the time comes for them to take their seats for the readings.

"You're crying, you silly man," she whispers, pulling a tissue from the neckline of her dress (lace, oh, she knows him too well, all that lace and lots of little ribbon fastenings for him to untie later, preferably with his teeth) and dabbing at his cheeks. "Whatever are you crying for?"

He shrugs, and he can't seem to find his voice until the time comes for them to say their vows. Then, he speaks clear enough that everyone present hears and understands and knows that he is Sansa's and Sansa is his and that's the end of it.

He relents and sits back into his wheelchair after he kisses her, and then he pulls her down into his lap so he can wheel them out of the church together.

 

* * *

 

The reception is lovely, and Sansa dances with everyone from the king (who is sitting between Myrcella and Tommen and having the time of his life, even though he does pause to give them occasional regretful glances when they're not looking) to Uncle Humfrey, who is recently home from visiting Aunt Lynesse in Mauritius. 

She even dances with Dad, carefully swishing the hem of her dress out from under his enthusiastic but lethal tread, and then she laughs as Marg and Leonette catch her by the hands and spin her around and around and around.

"Alright, mate?"

Willas looks up with a start when the seats nearest him are suddenly filled with Ed and Rodge and Renly, all three merrily red in the cheeks and grinning broadly.

He glances back out at the dancefloor, where Sansa is leaning back in Jon's arms and laughing, her hair coming undone from the elaborate bun so her veil hangs lopsidedly, and he smiles.

"Never better."

 

* * *

 

He and Sansa are waiting on the lift to come down so they can get upstairs to their room when Margaery emerges from somewhere upstairs, trailed closely by none other than Tyrion Lannister.

Tyrion grins and swaggers off back into the ballroom, whisteling cheerfully, and Marg resolutely straightens her hair.

"He's very charming," she says firmly, and then she follows after him.

Sansa sniggers the whole way up to their room, but once Willas has levered himself up onto the bed there's neither time nor place for sniggering.

 

* * *

Breakfast the following morning is a subdued event, because apparently the party continued on until nearly six o'clock, when the hotel manager begged that he be allowed close the ballroom for a couple of hours so it could be cleaned, because they had another wedding coming in that day.

Sansa and Willas arrive first, and watch as everyone comes in after in varying states of shame and hangover.

Willas is fairly certain the moment when Jorah runs in looking for Val because Dany has gone into labour will remain the funniest of his life, if only because of how panicked the normally stoic bloke is at the prospect of childbirth.

Or at least, it's the funniest moment until the waiters come around with the newspapers and it turns out Tywin Lannister has been arrested for fiddling the figures in the last general election, and nobody is sure how to react until the king bursts out laughing.

 

* * *

"You know," Sansa says as the stewardess wheels Willas' chair away and they settle back into their seats, "I'm looking forward to this."

"Getting away from our mad family for a while, you mean?"

"Mm," she sighs, leaning her head on his shoulder and smiling when he kisses her hair. "And having you to myself. That'll be nice."

"I'm sorry we couldn't go somewhere more honeymoon-y," he apologises, smiling down at the tangle of their fingers, sunlight catching on the diamonds on Sansa's engagement ring. "I had planned on somewhere exotic and wonderful like Bora Bora, but I'm afraid this will have to do."

"Oh yes, because a city tour of the Americas is such a chore," she teases, turning her face up to his and wrinkling her nose. "You are a twit sometimes, you know."

 

* * *

 

Joffrey steps out of his cell and heads for the canteen, brushing past a group of untidy men with hair a shade too long.

Every one of them has elaborate coiling tentacles tattooed into their left upper arms, left bare by their sleeveless t-shirts.

"That's him, isn't it?" asks the one with the broken jaw that wasn't set properly.

The big blonde one with the smooth cheeks grins.

"That's him, alright. Let's go."


End file.
